


The Bell And The Sword

by whaleofatime



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Old Kingdom Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Fantasy, I got too excited and the plot went wild, I hope you like it Victoria!, M/M, Necromancy, Sabriel AU, Sheith Secret Santa 2019, Shiro does not end with two arms, Shiro starts with two arms, Slow Build, The Astral Plane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22144108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whaleofatime/pseuds/whaleofatime
Summary: Who guards the living against the dead?The answer is usually the Shirogane, the world's most powerful necromancer, but when tragedy strikes Takashi finds himself picking up the enchanted sword and the bells of the Shirogane to do what he can to keep the Dead back in Death.He picks up a mysterious soldier he saved from the Other Side along the way. Keith is all rough edges and sharp sides, but Takashi must put his trust in him as they head towards the final battle.They are all that's left standing between Life and Death.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 25





	1. Night Flight Hard Fight

Takashi becomes the Shirogane all at once at age 19, while curled up under a blanket in the common room studying for a heinous flight safety exam coming up the next day. He’s squinting at text he doesn’t want to read for one moment, and in the next, Black manifests, the summon that has served the Shirogane clan for centuries. She’s a startling sight at the best of times, unknowable but definitively feline. At home, Black usually takes the form of a massive cat-shaped Thing, stuffed with stars with eyes that glow like dying suns. She also enjoys napping wherever there was a patch of sun, and had a tendency to purr like an earthquake when Takashi’s grandmother scritched her just right under her chin.

Now she appears like a lion made of nothing, large enough to fill the room, and when he tilts his head back to meet her eyes, all he sees is nothingness. It feels like falling, and fall he does, right into-

The Valley of Death is a misnomer. Takashi realises that this isn’t common knowledge, not even to Shiroganes, who are among the world’s most powerful necromancers. Death is a literal place, a river that stretches endlessly into the dark horizon, and those who die have their souls pulled by the current on and on and on until their truest ends, while Shiroganes and other short-term visitors try to resist the pull of the current tugging at their ankles, and avoid spending too long there in fear that a quick trip becomes more permanent. How to safely navigate the gates of Death was among the first things Takashi was taught, as soon as he was old enough to understand exactly what it was that his grandmother did when she disappeared in full regalia for weeks at a time.

There was a lot less training and a lot more screaming when his grandparents realised that Takashi didn’t travel to Death the way the bloodline magic manifested in them. When he goes into Death, he takes his body with him, and for this reason he sees and feels things invisible to the rest of his family, and for this reason he knows that the Valley comes before Death.

He calls it the Astral Plane, even if it’s more like a canyon in the desert on a moonless night. Takashi comes here when he wants to be truly alone, because not even the great Shirogane Amiya can reach him here. The pull of Death calls a little more keenly, and the gravity and the weight and the light in the Plane feel just a little off, but it’s the one place that is truly, undeniably his, and so it’s a place that Takashi finds less threatening and more calming instead.

That’s the usual case, anyways. Today, though, forcibly flung through to the Astral Plane while still wearing his reading glasses and fleecy bright orange pyjamas, Takashi is trying to stay calm and keep his footing, as panic and the current both try to rattle him.

His bare feet slip on the damp gravel of the Astral Plane, but once he’s caught his breath and let the tension leak out of him and into the chilly waters at the start of the river of Death, Black makes an appearance.

Shrunk down now to the size of a particularly fearsome lioness, she rubs her jet-black skull against his hip, the bell on her collar ringing unusually loudly in this quiet place. A gentle headbutt almost has him falling over. “Hey, now,” he chides her, ignoring the fact that his voice is wavering and cracked. “What’s the matter? Why did you bring me here, Black?” Takashi looks around, part-expecting and mostly hoping to see a familiar face. It must be urgent, and it must be related to Shirogane business if Black was sent for him instead of his grandparents simply picking up the phone and calling the boarding school. It takes a moment to calm down enough for Takashi to centre himself and then let his consciousness flow out, to seek a sign of something, anything living.

Souls are a gray area, but souls tethered to living bodies give off some warmth; his grandmother is powerful enough a sorcerer that her presence rings as clear as a bell, but there’s nothing.

A sense of dread creeps quietly up Takashi’s spine, but whatever else might be wrong, Black is here and not another person in the world has so strong a protector. Takashi kneels down to draw level with her, idly rubbing under her chin and trying to ignore how the sensation feels like it’s too-hot-too-cold-too-soft-too-hard-too-sharp-too-blunt all at once. “Is everything all right?”

She licks up the side of his face, with a rough tongue that is neither warm nor damp, before she pulls out of his hold, and moves back to sit on her haunches.

Like magic, a leather bandolier and a sword appear at her paws, and Takashi tries and fails to hold back a gasp of dismay. The tools of the Shirogane office, the seven bells and the silver sword, are not something his grandmother would ever let out of her sight. And for them to be here, passed along to him by Black in this place, means that something has happened to his grandparents.

It’s a battle to stay calm, but there are some things that have been trained right into him. Even as he struggles to keep his breathing even, Takashi pulls the drawstrings from his pyjama bottoms and ties the sword to his waist, before heaving up the heavy bandolier and slinging it across himself.

The bandolier is tied too tight, and again Takashi has to struggle to not lose his composure as he adjusts the buckle a few sizes up from what his grandmother has been using for the last several decades.

He touches the handle of each bell, from smallest to largest, and though they are stoppered to prevent accidental invocation, each one hums a different note at his touch, responding to the Shirogane that wields them.

With time being kinder to Shiroganes than most and his grandmother Amiya as indomitable as she has always been, Takashi had been _so sure_ that he would not be called upon to become the acting Shirogane for many, many more years. _That’s_ why he chose to leave the family home and attend a boarding school, breaking the tradition of home-schooling and endless magical training that have been the hallmark of the childhoods of most every Shirogane.

That’s why he’s in Tokyo, working hard to join the airforce, dreaming of a good life lived in the skies before his grandparents retire and he takes up the mantle, the bells, the sword, and all the responsibilities that come with being one of the most powerful necromancers alive.

He really should have known better. If Death could come for his parents while they were young and powerful and his father was a full-fledged Shirogane, it’s mad that Takashi thought he would somehow be spared the horrors of the job.

Instead he’s a 19-year-old ankle-deep in the waters leading to Death, trying not to cry because there’s a good chance that a Free Magic creature or something from Death has killed every remaining member of his family, and now it’s down to him to go back home to find out what has happened, and become the serving Shirogane.

He touches the hilt of the sword, a golden lion’s head with a raw chunk of quartz in her jaws, and remembers the inscription.

_I was made to slay those already Dead._

For a long, long moment, Takashi wishes that he wasn’t a Shirogane, that no one in his family was, and that he wasn’t here in the Astral Plane crying into the black abyss of Black’s semi-corporeal form because everyone may well be dead but already beyond reach.

It’s a good thing that time moves differently between here and the other world; Takashi thinks it’s many, many days before Black nudges him back to Life.

Bare feet on the threadbare carpeting in the common room, chest weighed down with grief and the weight of the most powerful bells in the world, Shirogane Takashi rushes back to his room to pack and leave for the home.

It’s going to be a difficult rest of his life.

-

While belief in magic and magic itself is sparser in Tokyo than in many other places in Japan and leeches away more and more every day, it took the headmaster all of a startled gasp upon seeing Takashi with the bells and sword before his request for leave was granted, and less than an hour after returning from the Astral Plane, Takashi pulls his greatcoat around him, checks to make sure the bulges of the bells aren’t too unseemly, grabs his hastily-packed bag and leaves the garrison and his dreams of being a pilot ordinary in all ways but skill behind.

So close to the start of the new year, the weather is terrible. Tokyo isn’t one for heavy snow, usually, but this year most of Japan has been swamped by a horrific cold front, and even in his coat that his father enchanted for him to keep him warm and dry, Takashi feels chilled to the bone. He isn’t sure if it’s because of the recent revelation of a tragedy, but something sinister seems to taint the air, and the harshness of the weather feels increasingly unnatural.

Black had remained in the Astral Plane, likely because it was the fastest way to travel if you had the knack and the power for it, but it means he is left to handle his travels home by himself.

The miserable weather means that even if he called in all the favours he's owed to 'borrow' a light flyer he could pilot in his sleep, the snow and blustering winds would sooner have him crashing into Tokyo Bay than reach anywhere close to Lake Biwa and the familial home.

The skies are a no-fly-zone, but the perpetual heavy traffic in Tokyo's streets means that while it's all treacherous slush, they are technically traversable.

It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission, and Takashi can find the time to regret his rashness in Death.

Stealing away like a shadow into the night, the golden boy of this garrison sneaks into the garage where the smaller military vehicles are kept, and liberates a bike with wheels enchanted to float just over the ground.

An all-terrain magicked motorcycle won't be the most comfortable ride in awful winter weather, but it’s wickedly fast, and the spells holding it in stasis and primed to ring in alarm are simplistic enough for Takashi to handle. Beggars, after all, can't be choosers.

They certainly can't choose the massive jeep in the back that looks like it could mow down most any wretched thing that drags itself out of Death, no matter how much they may want to.

Carefully Takashi removes the smallest, sweetest bell, fingers snug around the clapper to stop Ranna from singing her lullaby. He's horrendously out of practice, but part of the power of the bells is that they all want to endlessly ring, and part of the power of a Shirogane is their ability to control both the bell and themselves.

Ranna the Sleepbringer, rung by the gentlest side-to-side motion, never more than thrice or the wielder would succumb as well. Nothing can resist her lulling call, and spells are no different.

There's a feeling like the taste of a _click_ , and Takashi revs the engine as soon as he feels the stasis break and the alarms turn off.

Unfortunately, spells fall asleep for only seconds at a time, much unlike people.

Fortunately, Takashi is very, very fast.

By the time the security spells snap back into place, Takashi is long gone into the dark of night, with no one none the wiser.

Well.

_Almost_ no one.

In the shadows, yellow eyes catch the weak moonlight like an oil slick, and a deformed muzzle catches his scent in the air.

-

Even going at full-speed, disregarding all road laws and ignoring his body's desire for sleep and rest, it's still late in the evening of the next day before an exhausted Takashi crests a low hill and sees the glittering waters of Lake Biwa stretching into the horizon. He can't see the house yet, not from this far to the north, but the sound of waves lapping at the shore, the soft susurration of wind blowing through pampas grass, the way even the weak wintry sun lights up the crests of waves, oh.

Takashi takes in a deep breath of home, and feels frost and the fizz of hard, wild magic run right through him.

He loves flying through the skies in a light flyer, loves cutting through clouds and hearing the soft static of the radio, but the raw magic that runs absolutely feral here in the valley of Lake Biwa fills him up somewhere deep, and for the briefest of moments, Takashi feels like the ground is thrumming beneath him and booming right through him and for that moment

the bells ring in his head, and power rings out of him.

Takashi is so taken aback by the scale of magic here that it takes him far too long to notice the taint of corrupt magic building in the air, like smoke from a fire long dead. It leaves him feeling sick to the stomach and it burns his eyes, and fear starts to crawl up his spine. The stench is being carried on the wind, getting stronger by the moment, and primal fear has Takashi racing down the rolling hills, gunning the exhausted engines to outrun them.

The sun would be setting soon, and whatever it was that was coming towards him would be able to move faster and more freely in the dark.

Takashi's never been afraid of the dark, has never been afraid of much at all, having been to Death and back more times before he learned how to read than most people will in their entire lives. Fear comes all too naturally now, though, swift and frigid, and the relief of seeing the island loom on the horizon has him forcing the bike well beyond its capacity.

By the time he reaches the little pier that leads to the island in the lake and the large house on the island, sunset is well underway and the world is tinted pink. Takashi jumps off the bike as it sputters and groans and dies, and staunchly tries to ignore the howls and screeches of the Dead, as dark figures begin appearing on the crests of the hills behind him.

Samhir at his side seems to jump in her sheath, and Takashi hurriedly presses a soothing hand to the hilt of the sword. Unlike the bells, Samhir is less likely to strike back at her wielder, his grandmother told him once. But a sharp blade is like a fine woman, because their beauty belies a spine of steel and a biting edge that's hard to see until it's too close.

It's probably unsurprising that his father and his grandfather were the best swordsmen in the family, but Takashi's interests lie distinctly elsewhere, and now is not the time to have that point clearly illustrated for him.

Deep running water is a good ward against a lot of magic, which is why Shiroganes long gone chose Lake Biwa's larger island to make their home, but summoning a path to reach it is therefore extremely hard to do. Takashi has never needed to complete a full spell himself; it's usually a whole family affair when he comes home for the holidays, a royal flush of stately, loving grandparenst at the rickety train station to collect him, but now all he has is himself, and a thousand howling ghouls galloping towards him.

Painstakingly unclenching both his fists and his jaw, Takashi takes a deep breath. _Remember_ , he whispers to himself as he rips out the shiny silver buttons of his greatcoat. _Patience yields focus_ , his father always used to say, because a younger Takashi always used to be a bit of a hothead.

There are many ways to gain access to the Manor as a member of the Shirogane clan, but for every single one the water must physically be crossed. Takashi's favourite way is the little enchanted reed boat his grandmother would weave with grass and spells and flowers in the summer, and the funniest crossing was when he and his grandfather swam all the way to the island in heavily magicked shorts.

This is the emergency method, and all it needs is the breath of a living Shirogane. Bringing the buttons up to his mouth, Shuro takes a deep breath in, and exhales over them. The magic catches, the circuit complete, and Takashi flings them into the lake as they grow and grow into large floating discs, looking for all the world like the reflection of five moons in the water.

Not taking a moment longer, hearing the whistle of stones and spears and arrows coming his way, Takashi prays that the greatcoat can bear some abuse and leaps onto the first disc, gladdened to find that the platform is solid under his feet. Something hits him in the back, but it doesn't puncture through, so Takashi makes another flying leap onto the second disc, breaking the spell on the first platform and changing it back to a shiny silver button that quickly sinks to the bottom of the lake.

Head down, blood pounding in his ears, Takashi continues this terrifying game of skipping stones, and doesn't try to hold back his tears when he lands on the island, welcomed by the massive, foreboding torii that marks the entrance to the Shirogane home. Then and only then does he feel safe enough to turn and face his pursuers, a mob of resurrected creatures ripped from death screaming as they try to cross the lake, and get burned by the water as a result.

Limbs are falling apart, the grotesque monstrosities seeming completely unbothered by an arm falling off or an eye rolling astray. Where the water touches them, rotted flesh falls off in chunks, and tarry black ooze trickles out in a miserable parody of blood. The stench has Takashi bent over and throwing up into a bush, adrenaline running its course and leaving behind tear-stained cheeks and weak knees. A single figure seems more whole than any of the others, a hulking mass even far away on the shore, covered in mangy fur the colour of a purpling bruise. Takashi has the uncomfortable sensation of being measured up and being found wanting, as the ringleader peers at him with beady eyes that glint yellow in the moonlight.

The thing turns away to commune with its fellow nightmare creatures, and it's as if a spell was broken. Takashi snaps himself out of his daze, scrubs at his face with the sleeves of his coat, and hopes that the night brings a snowstorm with it so that the creatures may be deeply inconvenienced as they seek to wreak havoc. He staggers pass the torii, and through the heavily warded wooden gates that lead to home. The gates slam shut behind him, and Takashi rushes through a front yard rendered barren by the winter.

He can't sense any other living being here, but still hoping against hope, Takashi yells for his family. "Grandmother! Grandfather! Where are you!"

There's no answer, but the front door rattles open and hope burns bright for all of a second before grim reality settles in.

It's only Black, back to the size of a housecat, and she might be the single most powerful creature he will ever meet in both life and Death, but disappointment hits him full in the chest as Takashi tries to keep it together in the face of his worst fears realised.

Traditionally, at least one member of the family must be at home at all times, so that in a pinch anyone working in the field knows that invariably they can call for help and be answered. For it to be this silent, empty even of the little silvery helpers built from charms, means that no one is home.

The bells and sword strapped to his body means that no one is likely to ever _come_ home.

The first swell of grief is a putrid, rotten thing, and Takashi feels bile rise in his throat. His family is gone, and that's likely related to the almost-ambush by the foetid creatures ripped from Death, and somehow all of this must be resolved by him, a fool of a boy who thought it was fine to neglect his training as a future Shirogane to try to take to the skies.

Takashi doesn't know how long he is slumped against the front door, on the precipice of a complete breakdown, but the moment is sharply drawn to an end when Black leaps into his lap, digging her claws into his thighs.

The sharp pricks of pain pull him back to the present, and Takashi tries futilely to dry his eyes. "What's the matter?" he asks her, rubbing just under her ear and ignoring his legs going numb under a cat currently the size of a very large dog. "Aside from all the big things, that is," he amends, because there is such a thing as too many things the matter.

Black nips his fingers, jumps off of him, and walks towards the front gate, turning back to stare at him in a blatant indication of _Hurry and come._ Even the gentle ring of the bell on her collar sounds like an admonishment.

Mindful of the occasional bespelled arrow crashing into the shores of the island, Takashi peers out from behind the gate, and the sight is somehow worse than all the objectively horrible things that have happened to him over the past 24 hours.

In the full dark of night, the hills are set ablaze, grasses dried by the winter winds catching fire from the torches held aloft by more Dead creatures than Takashi has ever seen, including on trips to the other side. The pristine, powdery snow has turned into miserable grey slush, as the purple leader funnels the endless parade of nightmares to launch themselves into the lake in endless waves. Outside of the ward of absolute protection that encases the household, the stench of the bodies boiling in the pure waters of Biwa is stomach-turning, even with the purification powers of the torii working to clear the air.

Takashi struggles at first to understand what was happening; why were they all throwing themselves back into Death? The deep water and unceasing flow of the lake was not something any Lesser and most Greater Dead could overcome with force alone, and while there is an army of them on the shores, it still wouldn't be enough to-

"Oh, no," Takashi whispers under his breath, once the intentions of the Greater Dead leader became clear. While Lake Biwa could and did destroy the Dead, Purple was throwing enough bodies into the water that as the bottommost creatures screamed and melted away into muck, more and more bodies were piled atop them, faster than the water could work to cleanse them.

There were now flotillas made from reanimated corpses and dark shadows meeting their miserable end, one layer at a time, and while the pace was slow, eventually the Dead would be able to form a macabre series of stepping stones to get to him and his home.

Instinctively his hand reaches for Kibeth in his bandolier, to use the Walker to control the Dead and have them walk neatly in single-file to a watery re-death. It made a certain sort of sense; have them march to meet their demise, and if his own will gets overtaken by it, then, ah, Black could grab him by the scruff and shake him back to wakefulness.

Kibeth's a tricky bell, though in many ways they all are. Even secured in its holster, it seems to reverberate with his intentions and demand for his hand to come closer, to wrap tight around the ebony handle and let it move the masses of Dead back where they belong.

It's only the muscle memory of having the back of his knuckles pinched whenever he got too cavalier with bell-handling that stays his hand. He leaves Kibeth be, and ignores the vague, deeply discomfiting feeling of having one of the bells be upset with him. One, two, even ten Lesser Dead would be manageable, and the potential kickback even at its worst would be worth the risk.

But a hundred? A thousand? Several thousand Dead things ranging from dull-witted reanimated corpses to whatever the _hell_ Purple was?

His sense of self would completely be subsumed by Kibeth, and barring the glow of Life in his veins, a casual observer would have a very difficult time indeed separating him from one of the Dead.

No, not Kibeth. Not any of the bells, not for this number. Takashi pulls away from the gate and allows it to slam shut, cutting off the sight and scent of Dead industry, and heads right for his room in the ancestral Shirogane home.

He's tired and grieving and scared and dirty, and for the moment he can at least address one of those pressing concerns.

-

Black comes back to him after Takashi has had a quick shower and is sat on the kitchen table with an enormous map of Japan on one side, and a hastily-made batch of mackerel-stuffed riceballs on the other.

The rice is still on the crunchy side of properly-cooked, but beggars can’t be choosers, and there isn’t much that Takashi can’t stomach after years of dealing with the canteens of boarding schools and garrisons. Eating badly also helps remind him of his sense of urgency; in the warm, cozy kitchen, the troubles ailing him feel desperately far away, and it seems like his family will walk in at any moment to scold him for undercooking the rice.

But there is no warm, affectionate presence, there are none of the summons that usually help in the kitchen, and even if the spells of protection stop him from being able to smell, see, or hear the Dead, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

So Takashi chews on, and tries to think of what he should do. There are other powerful magic-user families that are allies of Shirogane, but the nearest house he could get to would be in southern Kyoto, and without a car or a bike, getting to it would be nigh-on impossible with an armada of ghouls on his doorstep. If there is some sort of large-scale uprising of the Dead, every single person in the country is going to be up to their necks in trouble anyways, and it’s a specific brand of trouble that is best left to a Shirogane.

If his grandmother were here, Takashi would happily declare that no number of Dead would stand a chance, but she isn’t, which means both that there was a fight she could not win, and also that the fight is now in his lap, except he’s a lot less experienced, and competent, and powerful, and-

He’s not an optimist by nature, but focusing on the fine details of how deeply out of his depth he is is not going to help, so Takashi tries to breathe and concentrate on nothing but chewing and occasionally sneaking Black bits of fish for a few moments.

There is, most definitely, an extremely dire problem with the Dead. First things first, he needs to let as many people know as possible to expect…. whatever this siege is. He suspects the epicentre of the Dead army will be wherever he is, because a dirty necromancer with the bells of Shirogane could drown the country in the Dead within a day. That’s information, and it’s information he can use.

Tugging a pen and his notebook out of his backpack, Takashi gets to work. First bullet point is, _Let everyone know a lot of the Dead are up and about,_ with subheaders listing the names of the families and institutions that have a channel of communication open with the house. Second is, _Find where the Dead are being risen_.

To call up this number of monstrosities, even the strongest necromancer would need an incredible amount of power. Their options would be limited; they could enslave a Shirogane, but if that were the case the bells and sword would not be in Takashi’s possession, so that seems unlikely. They could break a Lionstone, monoliths built on overlapping leylines to amplify the power, but breaking a Lionstone is such a vicious corruption of the flow of power that there’s no way it would have gone unnoticed.

There were also powerful families guarding the four live Lionstones, and all their locations are kept secret, so it seems unlikely that that is the case.

The last option that he can think of, the one that feels the most likely, is that someone has gone to the sole broken Lionstone, desecrated when the royal family of the Chrysanthemum throne had been killed atop it a hundred years ago, and repeated the ritual with the spilling of equally powerful blood.

In this scenario, it isn’t difficult to imagine whose blood this mystery necromancer would have gathered, but Takashi is _not_ thinking about that right now. Though the Lionstone is in Tokyo, the capital is so immersed in harnessing technology and science to develop rapidly that it had lost touch of its magical roots, and in most places the atmosphere was so thin that there was a very real chance that something of this magnitude could have happened and not been detected.

It would certainly explain why he had felt so discomfited the whole way down from Tokyo; the summoning of this army of Dead had pushed dirtied magic ahead of them in their pursuit, like a burst of humidity before the onslaught of a stormfront.

Blood rituals are a tricky business, but if the unwilling sacrifice of a Shirogane was powerful enough to rip the path to Death open and allow passage for a cast of thousands, then Takashi is willing to bet that the willing sacrifice of a Shirogane could be powerful enough to shut it back down. Worse comes to worst, he can try out bell after bell on whoever is behind all of this and see what sticks, and have Black whisk away the bells to whoever she trusts as a successor once he inevitably succumbs to death as a boy doing his absolute best and falling short anyways.

Mind made up, Takashi goes into action mode. He hasn’t slept in over 24 hours by this point, and tea and questionable rice balls are his only sustenance for the day, but this is a Life and Death situation, it’s larger than just one man, and he

is promptly taken off his train of thought by Black bonking his head with an imperious paw. Takashi stares at her in red-eyed befuddlement and tries to get off his seat again, but Black’s as big as a lion now, sat on the table, and her paw near covers his face as she stops him from rising up and off to figure out how to get back to Tokyo when the family motorcar is on the side of the lake with thousands of Dead.

She stares at him, unblinking, and he’s caught in her gaze. There’s a _pop!_ , like a dislocated bone popping back into place, and when Takashi looks around he realizes that he’s back in the Astral Plane, and that Black is pawing at her collar while maintaining their eye contact.

It’s not a place where he wants to be, currently, but he’s sure she has his reasons. “Do you need me to take it off, Black?” he asks, just to be sure. The collar is an ancient thing of beaten leather, with more runes inscribed in it than you could find in a library of magical works, and he’s never been sure why a Free Magic creature of her calibre has ever allowed a collaring.

He supposes he’s about to find out the reason, when Black blinks slowly at him in a cat’s fond way of saying _yes, you idiot._ He reaches towards her and she allows him to curse and struggle with the buckle. It soon becomes clear that it’s enchanted to stay closed, and at a loss, Takashi leans over to breathe over the silver.

It comes off easily after that, though Takashi has to catch it with both hands when it comes undone, the bell on it feeling shockingly heavy for such a small thing. He isn’t quick enough to stop it from ringing, though, and without Black’s pelt to soften the sound it rings a deep, deep note, heavy and tasting of iron, like an earthquake in your head.

  
Takashi gasps, and quickly stoppers the clapper.

It’s Saraneth, it’s the sound of Saraneth, why was a version of the Binder hanging from Black’s neck, what has he done-

In front of him, Black grows and grows in size, until she’s taller than the tallest thing he’s ever seen, and when she roars, the very mountains that enclose the Valley of Death rattle to their core.

_Oh_ , Takashi thinks, _this was not on the list_ , as he expects to be bitten clean in half, or potentially kicked straight through the ninth gate of Death for that one time he rubbed his grubby hands on her instead of washing them after dinner at age, ah, five? Maybe six.

He is not sent to meet permanent Death, he’s not even nipped a little bit for sins long past. Instead, he gets a voice in his head that sounds like a hundred million voices all rolled into one.

He assumes it’s Black, because it’s about the outer limit of what he feels equipped to handle at the moment.

_Yes_ , she goes, booming like the whole world screaming the word. _Without the Binder, I have my powers returned to me. Here, I am more as I should be._

What she should be is amazing, and Takashi has half a mind to be deferential, but respect is hard to dredge up in the face of something that has featured in your baby photographs, and is also an ever-present shadow in almost all Shirogane pictures taken at home. Black is Black is Black, even if she’s more a god than a kitten at this point.

So Takashi smiles, stepping back to try and look at her face. “Who binded you, Black? Are you all right?”

Her affectionate chuffing almost bowls him over. _One of yours found me here, a century ago, and humbly asked for my assistance. Saraneth bound me to my word; to look after the Shirogane line, and to restrict my powers in Life so that I do not throw the world out of balance_.

“That’s nice of you to help,” Takashi says with a crooked smile, trying extremely hard not to let on how thoroughly overwhelmed he is. “I’m glad my ancestor made a good impression.”

_She was timid but convincing, and I decided then that I would follow her. A few centuries means nothing to me, after all._

Takashi tries to remember what he can of Shirogane Kume, the Shirogane that prevented a complete breakdown of Life and Death after the breaking of the Lionstone, and has a hard time imagining the lady whose portrait is in most every textbook on magic and necromancy in the world being described as ‘timid’. After all, it must have taken unspeakable courage to run into Black in her raw form in the wild and still have the guts to proposition her. What could even drive someone to do such a crazy thing?

Considering that Takashi is ready for a last stand against an unknown enemy at a battlefield where he suspects his family have died in, perhaps the crazy is hereditary, hmm.

Focus, focus, patience yields focus. Takashi tries to keep himself on track. “Okay, Black, that makes sense to me. But why did you need me to take Saraneth off? Is there a promise you need to break?”

_No. But I needed more of my power to stop you from rushing to your doom, little one._ She bats him most gently with a massive paw, and Takashi tips over, landing on a patch of questionable moss with a light _oomph_. _You bring your body with you when you come into Death; here I can bring your body with me to wherever you may wish to go._

Instantaneous or near-instantaneous travel! It’s not as thrilling and hands-on as piloting, but it certainly would be one for the record books. Takashi cannot believe that this was an option; despite all his curious adventuring while here in the Astral Plane, only two paths have ever been available to him. Down the valley, following the river into Death, and climbing against the current back to where he left Life. There were no other exits, no secret roads that lead to exotic locations, just forwards and back.

With this, though, his options have significantly improved. “So you could take me to our allies’ houses? We could keep hopping from place to place, and build support? That would be amazing!”

Black looks chagrined by his bright ideas. _I would be able to come and go as I please. But you are still one of the Living, no matter what Shiroganes think of themselves, and if I move you through this Valley more than once a moon, your tether to Life will fray, and I do not know when it would snap_.

Even for a Free Magic creature more akin to a deity than anything else, there are limitations. Takashi knows he shouldn’t be surprised by this, knows that even simply being here in the Astral Plane draws him towards Death, and that it’s more than reasonable to assume that any vigorous activities here likely will not end well for him.

He knows all this, and he still can’t help becoming upset, teeth clenching and grinding. One step forward, two steps back. If he decides to head to the wrong place, he won’t have a month to spare to rethink his decisions. He has to make a good call, and he has to make it now.

The answer seems depressingly obvious.

“Black, could you take me to the Lionstone in Tokyo? I think…. I think whatever happened to everyone, it’s going to be there, and whoever did it to them is also there. I have the bells and the sword, I am the Shirogane, so that’s where I need to go.” He hopes he sounds braver than he feels.

The extremely mighty celestial lion nods her head. _I can. And I can also carry messages to the allies of the Shirogane. For now, however, you must rest._

Takashi laughs before he can help himself. “I can rest when I’m dead,” he tells her fondly. “So don’t worry about me. I’ve stayed up for longer for worse reasons. Saving the world, maybe, is pretty good motivation.”

Black adamantly rests back on her haunches, effectively blocking his path back to Life. _Time is different here, you know this._ It’s a gentle scolding, but Takashi is nevertheless deeply embarrassed. _Rest. I will protect you, and when you wake, I will take you where you need to go._

It is true that time doesn’t flow at the speed of Life here, but it’s well beyond Takashi’s ability to predict. If Black says she’ll wake him when he needs to be wakened, he’s willing to take her word for it. And the prospect of some sleep, even in amongst the damp moss and river rocks of the valley of Death, has his eyelids grow heavy. Still, Takashi tries to protest. “I have to protect the house, before I go!”

Lions can’t smile, not really, but whatever Black is doing is that, with a lot of teeth. _My collar also stopped me from using excessive force. That is no longer an issue, little one. Rest._

The command has the same force behind it as Ranna in full swing; Takashi is asleep before he’s fully horizontal.

-

Despite his training as a Shirogane-in-waiting and his own frequent jaunts into the Astral Plane, Takashi is confident that this is the first time he's washing his face in the waters of Death. It's a chilly wake-me-up, but Black had promised that it couldn't make things any worse, so.

Gargling with it seems just a step too far, though, and he hopes morning breath isn't an issue here in the valley. All in all, Takashi feels surprisingly well-rested and clear-headed, with the beginnings of a game plan forming in his head. It isn't an ideal plan, and success is a vague, distant hope, but for the cards he's dealt, Takashi thinks it's manageable.

He discusses strategy with Black before they leave this place, to try and squeeze out every second out of the time warp that they can.

"First is taking care of the house," Takashi says, holding up a jagged rock. "I need to get dressed for a fight, and get letters ready for you to send to our allies. We also need to figure out how to keep the focus of the Dead on the house, so that they're occupied and don't realise I'm gone, but still stop them from destroying the island. Thoughts?"

Black, today the size of a stand-offish Labrador, rests her paw on house-rock. _With the will of a Shirogane, the summons made for defence against the Dead may be awakened. If you put a glamour on one of them to take your appearance, it may do what you wish._

He had no idea they had anything more heavy-duty than the kitchen spell summons, but he's glad someone had the foresight to prepare for the worst case scenario. But, even so… "And if they breach our defences?"

_Then I will welcome them most warmly._

That's certainly one way to describe it, oh. Takashi grins despite himself, before trying to sound serious again. "All right. Once I'm prepared, you'll take me to the Kokugyoku Lionstone, where I _think_ I'll find the necromancer behind all of this. If I'm lucky, my grandparents are there, and once I free them we can handle them together. If I'm not…"

It's a difficult promise to make, but it's a necessary one. "If I have to handle it alone, I'll ring Astarael." He touches the handle of the largest, heaviest bell in his bandolier, Astarael the Sorrowful. "I should be able to take the magician into Death with me, and with any luck we'll be thrown past the ninth gate, and that’s how it ends. If that happens, can you please take the bells and sword to someone you trust?"

No magic and no power in the hands of humans can force an escape back through the ninth gate. Takashi himself has only ever ventured to the fifth gate under the careful supervision of his grandmother, and he knows that if he rings Astarael, then that's how it ends.

It's a solution to the problem, and Takashi will, ah, cross that bridge when he gets to it.

Black gives her word that she will defend the bells and sword, and there are no further plans to be made. No point in counting chickens before they hatch, no point in strategising for a future that likely won't include him.

Takashi takes a brief moment to centre himself, and to remember that the river flows from Life into Death.

Endings are a man-made concept, and the skies past the ninth gate are supposed to be the most beautiful sight any mortal is granted.

Wherever they are, he hopes his family is all right, and that they know he's really trying to do his best.

They depart.

-

It should be quite late in the morning when they make it back home, but Takashi has to blink a few times and reacclimate himself as he stumbles back to life under the blanket of night.

The puffy clouds rolling across the sky are tinted red from the light of torches. The cold nips at his ears, and there's a promise of snow on this full moon night.

That works in their favour, water above and below the Dead. The moon shining bright and heavy helps with casting protective charms against abominations, too.

One step at a time, all the way to whatever victory he can grasp. Takashi hurries out the front gate, to the main torii by the pier. Its huge red beams seem to glow, and carefully ignoring just how close the rafts of corpses have come, he presses the palm of his hand to the lacquered wood.

_It should feel like pulling out weeds,_ Black had told him. _The third Shirogane was an avid gardener, and he made an army of golems out of the island soil to help him build the courtyard and protect the land. They will come when you call._

Concentrating on the slightly scratchy feel of wood under his hands and digging his feet deeply into the ground, Takashi imagines in his mind's eye the three other toriis on the island, each facing a cardinal direction. It's nerve-wracking work, concentrating as arrows and spears clatter against the wards while the Dead that float on their companions' bodies shriek abuse at him. The toriis were all built together, for each other, though, so after a few minutes he feels a crackle of power shoot out through the main gate, linking all four torii and reinforcing the shields and wards.

All above him the sky ripples and glows silver-white as the spells are powered up and the barrier surrounding the island thickens. With every corner of the island thrumming with magic, reaching down through the ground to call on the resting golems is made much simpler. Takashi had worried that he would need to pull them out himself, but instead all that's needed is for him to activate the little emergency button built into them, and out they pop.

(Like weeds!)

He snags one of them as he rushes back, and hastily draws out the runes for duplication onto its forehead, activating it with a drop of his blood.

Spell complete, there are now two Takashis, one of whom is well over ten feet tall, but hopefully perspective works in their favour here.

He has no other options.

Satisfied with his hasty spellwork, Takashi runs back into the house to pack his supplies. He readies enough food and water to last a few days, grabs the thinnest blanket he has, and grabs a polishing stone and mineral oil with some vague ideas about using them for Samhir. He chucks whatever spellbooks he thinks might come in handy into the bag, along with two changes of clothes. He’s halfway into pulling a warm sweater over his head before a thought strikes him in the head.

Aside from the sword and the bells, the Shirogane also has a costume that denotes their post. Leather leggings enchanted against the chilly waters of Death, light and strong chainmail crafted so finely the links could barely be seen, and a tunic over the top of it in thick black brocade, stitched with a moon over the heart and tiny stars scattered across it in silver thread. Every single piece of the outfit is ancient and magicked to hell and back, and would provide much greater protection against the Dead than anything Takashi could get his hands on.

It’s a long shot, because if his grandmother had been out scouting the source of this mayhem she would have been in full dress for her own protection, but it’s a shot worth taking. Takashi races to his grandparents’ room, apologising to the walls before slipping in and briskly searching through their chests and cupboards. He tries very hard not to think about why the room is empty and how it’s likely to stay that way.

With all the Dead creatures howling after him, Takashi only has time for one panic at a time.

In a beat-up leather chest that smells faintly of cedar, he finds what he’s looking for, though it occurs to him somewhat late in the game that an outfit that would fit his short, slim grandmother would at best look ridiculous on him and at worst rip at the seams.

Fortunately, the cloth-makers had more sense when they constructed the garments than he has at present, and as he pulls the leathers on and wears the chainmail over his undershirt, Takashi is pleasantly pleased to find that everything fits exactly right, down to the placement of the full moon shining on his chest.

It feels… right. It feels the most right anything has felt over the past day and a half, and what that entails is too heavy to disentangle right now. Looking around the room and making sure he isn’t missing anything, Takashi heads back to his bag and the awaiting Black, and closes the bedroom door very quietly behind him.

-

Stepping into Death in what amounts to the full armour of the Shirogane is a very different experience to visiting in his own clothes. For one, Takashi feels more confident in himself and in the mission, bolstered by clothes that have seen his ancestors through centuries of conflict. For another, they seem to actually keep him warm, which is a fantastic bonus for somebody who brings his physical body with him straight into the valley.

It’s even more an unusual situation to be racing down the mountainside on the back of a horse-sized lion-shaped Free Magic creature, and even though Takashi’s legs already feel like jelly trying to keep his seat on Black, he also has to try very hard to resist whooping and throwing his hands into the air.

It’s an _amazing_ feeling.

Takashi had offered to make a makeshift saddle out of blankets and belts, which Black had imperiously declined, and bareback-riding isn’t something Takashi’s had much training in, but here they are. It’s the fastest way to move, and while time is more amorphous here in the Astral Plane, the sense of urgency of hurtling across the valley is helping Takashi to keep himself psyched up. In his mind, he’s half-expecting to roll into the tomb that holds the broken Lionstone and find some ghastly 10-foot-tall wraith, and in a panic Takashi will throw Astarael at its head and that will be the end of that.

In the meantime, he allows himself to feel the sharp, zinging thrill of the world’s most amazing mode of transport, hugging more tightly around Black’s neck and burying his face in the not-fur at her scruff. Something niggles at the back of his mind, though, and Takashi checks in on the network of toriis protecting the island. He frowns a little when he feels a heavy impact against it. He would have been happy to assume it was some sort of particularly large spear, or maybe a small Dead had been flung clear across the water somehow, but the _boom boom boom_ of things smashing against the shield keeps happening. The wards are holding strong, but the steady assault is unnerving. If time is a fluffy thing here, then could it be possible that this is a forewarning about how bad things will get soon? Or eventually? Or?

Takashi groans. Life and Death he can handle just fine, but playing with time is beyond mortal magics for a very good reason. His alarm only increases, though, when Black suddenly skids to a halt, ears pricked up as she looks around her.

“Everything okay, Black?” Takashi asks, knowing entirely well that not much actually is.

_One of the Greater Dead is trying to tear down the barriers. They have gotten closer to the island sooner than I anticipated._ She’s growling, and it’s terrifying to feel skin to skin. _Too close. The shields may not hold._

It’s not too difficult to come up with a solution. “Black,” he says, trying to soothingly pet her by her jaw where she usually likes it, “it’s all right. Drop me off at Kokugyoku, then go home and defend the house. I can wait until you come back before I try to get in a fight. It’s going to be fine.”

His voice doesn’t even waver, and Takashi is extremely proud of himself.

Black doesn’t look very convinced, and there’s no bell around her neck to make her listen to Takashi, but the _boom boom BOOM_ is only getting louder and Takashi knows she can feel it to. “Trust me,” he says, because he knows that after the bells and the sword, the house with its armoury and library stocked with hundreds of years of knowledge and power is the most important thing in defending against the Dead.

A 19-year-old barely-trained Shirogane is a lot more expendable, and he hopes that she’ll accept that. He’s doing his best to accept it too.

The sound Black makes is probably Free Magic creature for _indecision_ , but it comes off more like a roar that comes before a neck gets snapped. She reaches behind her and gingerly bites Takashi’s collar, unseating him and having him stand in front of her. _This is foolish, and unwise, and impossible._

Takashi grins and presses their foreheads together. “You said the exact same thing when I jumped off the roof because I wanted to show granddad that I could fly. You caught me then, you’ll catch me now. Go take care of the house. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Black nuzzles against him, and licks down errant wisps of hair gone fly-away after a brisk lion-ride. _You were always my favourite_ , she tells him almost conspiratorially. _Be well, I will return soon._

Takashi rubs at her ear. “You’re by far my favourite unspeakably powerful entity created entirely from magic too. Now, just point me the right way, and-”

Instead of being reasonable, Black just grows a little larger, picks him up by the scruff of the neck again like he’s an errant kitten, and flings him towards a patch of rock face that looks like every other patch of rock face in this damned world. Takashi instinctively braces for hard impact, and-

instead, slams into absolutely nothing, rolling across a chilly stone floor instead.

“Magic travel is terrible,” he says out loud, once he’s rolled to a stop, nose pressed against a stone wall. Ego bruised but body well, Takashi sits up and looks around. He had expected to be dropped right into the massive courtyard where the Lionstone stands, hidden from the public except during the official week commemorating the Felling of the Chrysanthemum. People were allowed to view the stone then, kept safe behind glass put up for the occasion, while little placards set everywhere explained how the Royal Family had been betrayed by the mages tasked with protecting the Kokugyoku Lionstone, and were then slaughtered to break it. Takashi always found it a bit morbid, and didn’t understand how people could treat it like a fun little excursion when the Lionstone gave off so much rotten, putrid energy even the royal mages struggled to contain under their spells and wards.

His grandmother had taken him to see it, because it was a lesson in where the pursuit of power could lead you, and Takashi had _hated_ it, and had been in tears when he found out that the King and Queen and Prince had died. His grandfather had then taken the Shirogane aside, tugging gently at her elbow, and had had Words with her about exposing their 6-year-old grandson to atrocities, and they had gone off for ice cream afterwards.

The gloomy aura around the stone that seemed to muffle even sunlight remains clear in his memory regardless, and this place…. is not that. It looks more like a storeroom, than anything else, and Takashi assumes that even for Black navigating across worlds is difficult, and he’s a little off course. Once he checks that his bag and his weapons are in order, Takashi gets up to leave through the wooden door barring entry to the room, before something tugs at his consciousness.

It’s a strange sensation, and that’s saying something after all the strange sensations that Takashi has been having lately. It’s the opposite of having something crawl out of Death, but it’s also not just him sensing the presence of life inside a mouse or somebody passing by nearby. Takashi’s keen to get going and hunt down Mystery Necromancer, but he’s also prone to bouts of unshakeable curiosity.

Now is one such moment.

Partially unsheathing Samhir, Takashi stalks deeper into the storeroom, going down whichever path that seems to call on him, just the slightest bit. He eventually finds himself near the back end of the room, and bells are blaring in his head. Larger pieces are kept here, hidden under muslin, and Takashi keeps going until he stops in front of a shape that’s about his height, dwarfed by what he can only assume are statues of knights mounted on horses on either side.

This is the right one, and Takashi’s able to tell what exactly it is that he’s feeling.

It’s like the times when he ventures into his Death with his family, and he comes out first. It’s when he’s on this side of Life, and somebody’s spirit pushes through that thin but impossibly thick barrier to come back to their bodies.

It’s when somebody’s in Death and they’re trying to get back to Life, only this soul feels…. stuck. Takashi doesn’t know how this relates to a statue, but if it’s a cursed object, or there’s a restless ghost, he can at least help them find peace before the world potentially ends.

Taking a deep breath, Takashi carefully tugs off the sheet.

Underneath it, he finds a statue of the single most unspeakably handsome man he has ever, ever seen.

“Oh,” Takashi whispers to himself.

And he falls into Death.

-


	2. In For A Penny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for canon-typical violence, tags have been updated (I think). Shiro has a very, very rough chapter indeed.

While training for mastery of the bells is highly-regimented, and the textbooks Takashi has had to use while studying up spellwork are the same ones that have been used for generations, there is a certain degree of freedom and unpredictability that comes with being an extremely powerful necromancer. After all, every day there are more Dead than there has ever been, and this means that things that have never been addressed cropping up is part and parcel of the job. It’s why the ability to make difficult decisions quickly is a trademark of a long-serving Shirogane, and why strong instincts and the confidence to listen to them is the hallmark of a good one.

Takashi had looked at the handsome statue in his suit of leather armour, standing tall and proud with his hands crossed in front of him holding a sword that must have long since gone missing, and Takashi had  _ known _ , inexplicably, that this is not a thing of rock, or at least not  _ only  _ of rock.

The man is alive, somehow, somewhere, and his spirit can come back, and while Takashi is rather occupied with a suicide mission to try and prevent the Dead from taking over life, this is a person in trouble who has potentially been in trouble for a very long time now, and his grandparents would not be very pleased with him if he had just let it be, so.

In terms of how to revive the man, well. He has a vague idea of finding the soul that gives off the same sound as the body, but as for where to find the man?

He's going in blind, which is seeming more and more the theme of the last few days..

The Astral Plane looks much like he had left it just minutes ago, albeit devoid of friendly Free Magic cats. Takashi looks around to take stock, hoping to find some sort of clue. He's half-hoping to spy a rock shaped suspiciously like a human, but the rocks irritatingly remain as rock-looking as ever. He frowns, and debates the wisdom of ringing Dyrim in the hopes of giving voice to the stranger's spirit.

He doesn't actually know if the man's close enough to fall under Dyrim's sweet suggestion to speak, and given that Dyrim isn't a bell he's ever used in Death before, Takashi has to seriously consider the possibility of a hundred recently-deceased souls rising up to shout at him.

No, he needs to come at this laterally. If the way he sussed out the poor man's wretched fate was by how similar it is to when his family walk back, then maybe he can find him here the way he would when he wanders into Death with his grandparents.

Takashi takes a moment to close his eyes and focus. He knows that the way he appears to others and the way others appear to him is very different because of his physical body. His grandmother said that he more closely resembled Black than anything else, a dense ball of energy glowing in the watery light of the valley. To him, though, the softness of spirits tied to life manifest here like ripples in a pond he's in the centre of. Something about that tether to Life drags the atmosphere of Death in its wake, and since even powerful necromancers don't often venture here, the ripples he feels are almost invariably a family member once he gets close enough to them.

A calm mind, complete quietness within himself; Takashi breathes in, and as he breathes out he tries to feel the currents and waves of life and death here. 

It takes a while, and when he finally catches a hint of it, his eyes snap open.

It's  _ insane _ . He had been anticipating quick, tiny ripples that pulse the tempo of a heartbeat lapping up against him, the way it is for everyone he has walked into Death with. 

Instead, the pulses come so far apart that it's blind luck that Takashi had happened to wait long enough to catch the tail end of a pulse and the beginning of the next. And where spiritual presences usually tread lightly, this feels like a monstrous presence. Focusing fully, the  _ boom _ almost knocks him off his feet. 

It's….. human, probably. Free Magic beings and spirits who are  _ dead  _ dead don't drag anything from Life behind them, in all of Takashi's experience. It's human, probably, and whatever spell has locked him in this state of limbo may be why the pulses are irregular and hugely amplified. It’s insane, and Takashi’s breaking into a run before the ringing in his ears has calmed.

Navigation is an absolute nightmare with how long of a gap there is between the pulses, but Takashi persists and keeps running every time it hits, and stops to recalibrate and wait for the next one. In the fuzzy grey air, he has no idea how long he spends running around in the valley of Death, and it isn’t until he’s almost at the first gate does he finally, blessedly  _ see _ something.

It’s grimly coffin-shaped, but it has that faint golden glow of something that isn’t due for Death quite yet. Takashi carefully steps closer to the thing, hand on the hilt of Samhir just in case it’s some new breed of creature in an odd form. This close, though, it becomes clear that the coffin is built from strips of spellwork, concealing whatever is inside. Takashi squints, because the runes are written so finely that it’s a struggle to read them without his glasses, but it’s-

Oh, my. It’s  _ embroidered _ . It’s silver thread on black silk, and that’s a hallmark of a Shirogane enchantment. It’s not impossible or even illegal for another magician to use the same materials, but the amount of hideous work involved in embroidering spellwork turns most people off, and from what he knows, even the Shiroganes only use spell-silks to safely bind extremely powerful creatures for longer than they can ring a bell.

Takashi’s first thought is that  _ this is probably a Free Magic creature that will rip my throat out if I free it _ , but his second thought, that oftentimes sounds like his exceedingly calm and patient grandfather, is that if a Shirogane wanted to get rid of something, they would not have used this much spell-silk to stop it from getting out but also other things from getting in, and they would most  _ definitely _ not secure the silks into the silty riverbed to stop it from being carried deeper into Death.

A distant ancestor wanted this spirit safe, and wanted to keep it both out of Life and out of Death indefinitely. It would have been extremely helpful if the ancestor had also tacked on a little note telling a passer-by when to release the soul inside, Takashi thinks with only a minimal amount of irritation. But this is what he has, and if he fails in the showdown there may never be another Shirogane traipsing around in these waters to help.

If Takashi were the one bound up like this, he would certainly like to be freed. And if what’s inside isn’t the man from the statue but instead some sort of terrifying foe, then it’s an opportunity for practice, probably. Either decision is acceptable and reasonable, but either way he needs to make it quick.

It was a lost cause as soon as he sensed that spark of Life, Takashi thinks as he unsheathes Samhir and hears her hum in delight. If there was a chance this was a man kept here for safe-keeping by a Shirogane, then this Shirogane is going to safely keep him. Two wide arching swings slice the bindings holding the form to the ground, and Takashi tilts it over so it rests in his arms before he very carefully slices through the silks. Samhir was made to subdue the Dead, but she is wicked sharp and with that much magic who knows what a wrong slice could do to to some poor trapped soul.

This close to the first gate of Death, Takashi’s struggling to keep his hand still. Free Magic creatures can roam wherever they please, but most do so deeper within Death where souls are a-plenty and there’s more feral power in the air than in the paltry in-between Astral Plane. He’s more exposed here than in the craggy rocks and little gullies of the valley, and it’s got his hair standing on end. He feels like he’s being watched, can almost imagine someone breathing down the back of his neck, and it’s awful.

Fortunately, the spell-silks were designed to be impervious to most everything an average necromancer can throw at them, but give way like butter under a hot knife to Samhir’s cutting edge. It’s a matter of moments before he’s cut through most of the wrapping, and is now gently pulling them off, increasingly anxious.

He doesn’t expect the fist that comes for his face, and extra doesn’t expect the hit to connect. Spirits aren’t meant to have weight enough behind them to damage his physical body, but the sheer crazy oddness of this particular spirit is far from his mind as Takashi’s head snaps back and his nose starts bleeding.

Laid out on his back in the gentle stream of Death, Takashi doesn’t find enough energy to do more than sigh as warm blood trickles down his cheek. From somewhere by his feet he hears the sound of someone furiously scrambling out of the bindings, and while Takashi is by now extremely certain that whatever is inside is human, and by the feel of it is connected to the statue he saw, it still pays to be wary.

So with another sigh, he staggers to his feet and holds Samhir in front of him as steadily as he knows how.

(It’s been a long almost two days, and if the sword sways a little bit, his grandfather isn’t here to lightly smack the back of his head, so.)

From the cocoon of spell-silks, a man looking as angry as Takashi is exhausted emerges, dressed in leather armour and a tunic of a fashion Takashi can only describe as historical. No longer obscured by fabric, the man’s a sight to see. He has big angry eyes, his hair’s long and braided down his back, and his tunic’s a brilliant red, with an emblem of a lion with a chrysanthemum at its back, symbolising the sun.

Chrysanthemums and lions, red silk and gold thread, the ready-to-fight posture, oh, god. Takashi blinks, and blinks again, and desperately tries to recall history books he hasn’t read in absolute years. That’s the crest and colours of the royal family, and this is the stance of a fierce fighter. 

Takashi wonders which of his ancestors decided to wrap up what looks like an extremely irritated soldier from, oh, a hundred years ago. He wonders if the man will have a particular aversion to the next person he sees in the Shirogane costume.

He wonders how this is his life as the man strikes, quick as lightning, disarming him and knocking him flat out on his back again, now with Samhir at his throat.

Takashi’s nose is still bleeding, and he swears Samhir is laughing at him.

“I think,” he says carefully, looking at the stranger threatening his life, “we need to have a talk.”

-

It’s not been a very good time for Keith. He doesn’t know why the Shirogane had knocked him out when the palace had been under attack, he doesn’t know why he wasn’t allowed to go after his parents, and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly in this grey valley with a boy  _ dressed  _ like the damn Shirogane but definitely isn’t  _ the _ Shirogane trying to act calm even as his Adam’s apple bobs like a ball on a string.

He can still hear the screaming in his ears, the smell of smoke and that stench of the Dead laying siege to the castle. It’s taking all Keith has to not scream and stab, but he has things to do and people to save; at the very least, killing the boy would be a bad idea if he wants to make it back home.

Keith is  _ not  _ going to ask why in the hells the boy had his sword, but he does feel better to have Samhir in his grip, the gold in the hilt glowing brighter for having returned to him. Instead, he lowers his sword but doesn’t let up his guard, just in case this is some deceit being played upon him by some wicked sorcerer.

It is hard, though, to stay fuming and fight-ready in the face of someone smothered in a nosebleed, with bruises under the eyes and a general air of youth and absolute fatigue.

Keith takes a step back to give him some sword-swinging distance, and glares at the boy. “Who are you, and why have you stolen the garb of the blasted Shirogane?”

The boy sits up a little, self-consciously rubbing at his face with his sleeve. “This is going to sound really mad,” he says, “but let’s start with names. Hi,” he smiles, wincing a little when it jogs his nose. “I’m…. Uh. I’m Shiro.”

‘Shiro’ is the least creative fake name for a Shirogane Keith has  _ ever  _ heard. And why is the boy giving a fake name to a member of the palace anyways? The situation is getting increasingly stranger. “A pleasure,” he tells ‘Shiro’, making extra sure to emphasise his disdain and how much he doubts that’s his real name. “You may call me Keith.” 

Names hold power, generally, but Keith supposes he’s fortunate in being part foreign-born. Western names don’t have characters in them; the name his father chose for him is beyond enchantment, and Keith is proud of this name, even if other palace members are openly derisive of his ‘impure’ blood. He’s never been good at keeping up a pretense anyways.

Shiro’s smile doesn’t waver, doesn’t even twitch at the unusual name. “Hello, Keith. Nice to meet you, even if it’s in the valley of Death. So, quick question. Do you know who tied you up and took you here? And why?” With a bit of a stagger, he gets to his feet. “And I need to be heading back, so tell me while we’re walking.”

For someone recently disarmed and punched, Shiro seems awfully calm as he shoves a fistful of the black silk into his bag, turns, and wanders down a path upstream that only he can see. Keith is further incensed at being spoken down to, but he also doesn’t want to remain stuck here in this valley of almost-Death, so he stomps after the boy.

“It was one of your lot. I’m surprised he didn’t inform you, and even more surprised he let a child wear the robes of office. I don’t know why he chose to imprison me, but he’s going to find out how I feel about it.” His grip tightens to the point of pain on his sword, and Keith tries to calm himself down. He’s a good fighter by any metric, but being blinded by rage and irritation isn’t particularly helpful. “Can’t you run? The palace must still be on fire,” he growls.

Shiro laughs, but it has a manic edge to it. “It isn’t,” Shiro says, though he does speed up to a jog. “The castle, it’s not on fire. It hasn’t been on fire for a very long time.” He pauses when they come to a fork in a river, facing both ways before deciding to head down the path on the left. “I’m really sorry, Keith, but the Shirogane that left you here for safekeeping must have done it at least a hundred years ago. And I’m not a  _ child _ , I’m 19 and training to be a pilot, thank you very much. But I am also a Shirogane, or  _ the  _ Shirogane, because something out there has killed my family, and I’m on my way to try and kill them back.” 

Keith nearly trips over a rock, nearly loses his absolute mind at the lunacy of what Shiro is saying. “What do you  _ mean _ , a hundred years? It couldn’t have been more than an hour since the Shirogane abducted me, the palace was under attack and I should have  _ been _ there. You’re lying to me, you must be some foul thing of the Dead come to betray me!”

Shiro turns at Keith’s outburst; Keith snaps.

Samhir whistles as she cuts through the air, and Keith refuses to feel guilty as blood blooms along the slim trail he’s cut across the bridge of Shiro’s nose. Another inch, is his threat. Another inch higher I could blind you, another inch deeper I could maim you. He knows the Dead are no fans of Samhir, made to slay those already dead. He fully expects for the beast to drop its glamour, to scream in agony and contort its form.

Instead, apparently-entirely-human Shiro curses and presses the sleeve of his tunic to his face, trying to staunch the flow of blood. No ghastly screeching, no skin bubbling and boiling, peeling back to reveal rot.

Just Shiro, scowling at him with baleful eyes. “I really shouldn’t have just let you take the sword,” he laments, and when he pulls his arm down his face looks a sallow, bloodied mess.

Still, he doesn’t take a step towards Keith, doesn’t reach for the bells, doesn’t raise his hand in anger. He just stares and drips blood and stares, before he sighs. “I’m sorry, Keith,” Shiro says, voice so soft it barely sounds over the steady trickling of water. “I don’t know why the Shirogane of your time did what he did, and I hope he did it for a good reason. I’m on a suicide mission to try and stop some mystery necromancer, and when I saw that you were trapped in Death, I just... wanted to help.” He shrugs, and tries to straighten his shoulders. “I can at least take you back to Life, and back to your body. I can even show you where you might get more information about the time you were from, but… I don’t have any answers for you.”

Guilt comes in slow, unending waves. Keith has many fears, and the thought of returning to a time far too far in the future for him to help his family and his friends has him strung out, nerves taut as a bow. He doesn’t want to believe that he’s a relic of the past, taken out when he could have helped the most at the whimsy of some lunatic necromancer. He’s consumed with terror and anger and confusion, lost in the world and feeling abjectly helpless.

It’s becoming clear that Shiro is, too.

He brings Samhir down, and holds his free hand out.

Shiro stares at it, and blinks. “Are you saying you want a slap, next? Because Keith, eventually I will start fighting back.” A pause. “Probably.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “The scabbard. Give me the scabbard so I can sheathe the sword.”

It’s as much an olive branch as Keith can muster, under the circumstances. It’s also more than he gives most, but Shiro has proven his earnestness, if nothing else, and Keith isn’t one to keep grudges when he doesn’t need to.

Shiro smiles at him as he unbuckles the belt and scabbard from around his waist and passes it over to Keith. “I might need to have the sword back once we get back to life, but I’m happy to let you hold her for now.”

Keith snorts as he fastens the belt around himself and puts Samhir away.

Shiro needn’t worry about losing the sword.

Neither Samhir nor Keith will be leaving Shiro’s side until he gets to the bottom of this.

-

On the thin, thin border between Life and Death, Shiro stops them with a sheepish look. “Look,” he tells Keith. “I’m a bit of a special case, because I travel with my body when I come here, but your body’s on the other side, and it’s currently made of stone. I  _ think _ whatever preservative the Shirogane used to keep your body whole will wear out once you step back into it, but just in case you wake up and you’re a statue, just stay calm. I’ll figure it out.”

How Shiro thinks he’ll be doing that, Keith doesn’t know, but he’s not too worried. It’s a strange sensation, to be a spirit so close to its body. It’s like there’s two of him, and he can feel the coolness of the room he’s in and a thin film of dust on his skin, but he can’t, but he can. His body’s waiting for him, and pushing Shiro aside Keith steps up and  _ in _ .

It feels like the stiffness of waking up after a long day of exertion times a thousand, and  _ everything _ creaks. Keith groans, and a thin sheet of stone cracks and drops off his face and onto the ground.

Ah, that’s the stiffness. 

He’s quick and efficient about removing all the pieces stuck to him, eager to be in possession of limbs and the ability to hit things really hard. The thin strands stuck in his hair are the most difficult to properly shake out, but undoing his braid and shaking does the trick. Samhir’s at his side, and even if Shiro insists he’s had a 100-year-sleep, he feels fighting fit, the royal emblem on his chest gleaming a brash, brassy gold. It’s deeply disorientating to see lights come from things that clearly aren’t candles, and to not be in the middle of a bloodbath, to see that time really has moved while he has just…. stood here.

But the time for grieving is not now. He might have missed the previous battle, but if there is someone out there causing grief to young Shirogane here, well. Keith might be up for a spot of stress relief by way of pummeling some terrible necromancer to the ground.

Braid neatly re-tied and the gold thread on his tunic shining, Keith feels as close to normal as he’ll likely feel for a while. Looking around, it’s easy to spot his companion.

Shiro is sat leaning up against a wall, bag open at his feet, rubbing some sort of ointment into the line of scabs across his nose. He winces, and when it pulls at his wound he winces some more, and it’s a pathetic sight that Keith knows he actively caused.

“Give it here,” he tries to say as kindly as he can manage. “I can at least help with this.” Keith’s kneeling a respectful distance away from Shiro, trying to be non-threatening and apologetic without actually saying what he means.

It’s not necessarily needed; Shiro hasn’t seemed threatened by him at any point in their short acquaintanceship. The Shirogane hands the cream over, tilting his chin up and closing his eyes.

“You know,” Keith says as he carefully slathers the medicine on, while trying to gently scrub off as much blood as he can manage, “for a Shirogane, you are full of weaknesses.” If Keith had truly wanted to kill him, he could have done so a dozen times over since they’ve crossed into this world. Shiro is all openings. 

“To be fair,” Shiro replies, clearly making an effort not to move his face, “I’ve been the Shirogane for two days now and no one’s killed me yet. It’s a pretty good track record.”

Is it, really? Looking at the boy up close, he looks even more haggard and downtrodden than before. The magic lights overhead throw everything into clarity, the bruises and the sleeplessness and the swollen nose and the dried and caked blood. 

Eyes closed and trusting, Shiro seems an unlikely saviour who needs most of the saving.

Keith sighs. He’s always been happy to be construed as aloof and stand-offish, because he knows that he really is usually happier left alone. But he also knows that he has a penchant to fight for the underdog, because that’s been him and his father his whole life.

No dog further under than a teenager trying to fight the forces of Death all by himself. Keith has a sneaky feeling that despite being singularly unqualified to do so, he’s about to mentally swear fealty to this absolute fool.

“You’re fine now.” Keith pops the lid back on the jar, and tucks it back in the bag. “We need to get going and meet this necromancer of yours.” With his sword at his side and all this anger powering him up, Keith thinks that very little can reasonably stand in his way. 

He helps Shiro to his feet, ignoring Shiro’s protests about how he can do it alone!, and guards the rear. Everything feels out of sorts, being a man out of time, and Keith doesn’t doubt that he’s on edge because he  _ should  _ be up to his neck in a battle, but instead he’s creeping down a corridor with an almost-stranger.

He is also starting to get the sense that there is something very, very wrong. It’s a feeling that was there as soon as he was released from his bindings, and it feels like it’s getting stronger. Keith isn’t a necromancer, but his mother has…. Ah, had a knack for magic, and he’s pretty sensitive to it himself.

What he’s sensing right now is rot, and it’s rot spreading towards them.

“Hey, Shiro,” he calls out quietly, as they exit the storeroom he had been kept in. “How good are you with the bells?” 

Shiro touches his bandolier, and looks over his shoulder at Keith. “Not nearly good enough to be a proper Shirogane, but good enough to see this through, one way or another.” 

He doesn’t look like he’s lying, but he doesn’t look like he’s confident either. Keith has a vague idea of how the bells work, from when the Shirogane of his time would come to the palace to consult with the queen and the king, but he can’t actively help Shiro cast any spells using them. Keith’s sensitive to magic and the Dead, but other than that, he’s relatively giftless with enchantment.

It’s suited him just fine, up until now. The sense of foreboding that was a mild itch at the start now feels like the pounding threat of an oncoming migraine, and Keith’s trying to keep his frenetic energy under wraps in case it sets Shiro off. Keith’s older, made older still by the technicality of having been alive in Death for so long, and it’s obvious that he’s had more combat experience. He’s committed, now, to seeing them through this alive, if only because Shiro’s as close to a companion he’s likely to have in this new, stupid world. 

The strain of something feeling very, very wrong has his teeth on edge, and he must make some sort of stricken noise, because instead of continuing down the passageway Shiro takes a step closer to him, expression concerned.

The wall by where the boy was stood just seconds before explodes in a shower of dust and debris, and a massive, mangy thing with thick fur the colour of a bruise taking too long to recover claws through it, looking disappointed that its massive claw isn’t closed around a young Shirogane’s neck.

“Lucky little rat,” the massive purple thing drawls, turning to face them head on, an absolutely towering presence. “But how lucky will you stay without your caretaker to mind you? You are  _ so _ easy to follow from Death, I should send you back.”

Keith’s on auto-pilot, having pulled Shiro behind him at the first instance of his hindbrain registering an attack, Samhir out and brandished in front of him. “Friend of yours?” he hisses at Shiro, as he looks for a way out of this predicament, and checks that nothing is following the purple monster.

“Tried to kill me at my home, if that counts,” Shiro snips back, already pulling a bell out of its holster. “You’re sure you aren’t dead, right, Keith?”

They keep slowly backing away as the Greater Dead laughs in delight and saunters after them, and Keith knows a few paces more and they’ll be back to the storeroom. It’s extremely close quarters, which favours hand-to-hand rather than a weapon, but without Samhir, trying to take down this purple monstrosity is going to be a problem. Shiro asking him oblique questions isn’t helping, but Keith answers anyways. 

"Pretty sure," he manages to grit out, blocking a glancing blow from a massive clawed hand. "Why?"

Instead of answering with words like a normal person, Keith is greeted with the jauntiest little tune he's ever heard. It sounds like a fiddle and a tambourine and a drum, but also undoubtedly like the ringing of a bell. He has to centre himself to stop his feet from breaking into a jig, which is  _ not  _ a feeling that comes naturally. 

In front of him, Purple stops mid-lunge, and starts to retreat. Its feet seem to be stepping away from them without its permission, as Puple growls and stares down at itself in disbelief. "What are you doing to me, little rat? Come and fight, Shirogane! At least the woman had the guts to face me before I killed her."

There's a stutter to the music, a misstep in a dance, before it rights itself. Keith is gently nudged aside by a pale-faced Shiro holding the bell in a strange grip with both hands as he swings it in a loopy figure of eight. His eyes are focused completely on Purple, and Keith is taken by just how cold and calm his anger is burning.

"No Shirogane has ever fallen to you," Shiro says with absolute certainty, "and no Shirogane ever will." His voice is an iron command all in itself, and both Keith and Purple flinch.

For every step Shiro takes forwards Purple takes a step back, and Keith assumes that this march will continue into Death, where he can't follow. For the dramatic entrance, he had been expecting a more vicious fight, but it's a very good thing that Shiro can so easily control a Greater Dead.

So…. easily.

Too easily?

The thought strikes Keith the same moment that Purple breaks into a toothy smile, halting in its tracks despite the continuous ringing of the bell. "You speak too soon, little rat," it croons before it leaps forwards, and gods Shiro is a most unfortunate man, is Keith’s first, most urgent thought.

Wicked claws gleaming slick and oily rip into Shiro’s right arm, shredding through the tunic but not reaching skin, halted by chainmail. If Keith had been faster, been closer, maybe he could have stopped it there, right there with minimal damage.

Instead, Purple laughs and pulls Shiro up by his right arm like a rag doll, and digs its fangs into his bare, unprotected hand.

Black-purple poison pours into the wound, and as he screams like a wrecked, dying thing, Shiro raises his left hand and clocks the Greater Dead right across the temple with Kibeth at full swing. It takes Purple by surprise, the thing sputtering and a little concussed as it drops Shiro to the floor to clutch at its head.

Keith knows an opportunity when he sees it. When Purple raises its massive paw to get at Shiro’s throat, Keith is there to deflect him, sparks flying where Samhir’s edge meets its claws. The thing is taller than Shiro and heavier than Shiro and Keith put together, and as it steps forward to put more weight behind its hand, Keith feels his arms tremble with the force of keeping it up and away from where Shiro is sprawled by his feet.

Purple grins to show off its incredibly disgusting teeth. “And what are you?” it asks, amused. “Trying to kill me with the Shirogane’s sword?” It gnashes its teeth and Keith barely dodges, keeping mum and buying time for Shiro to drag himself away from them so that he has space to move.

Lucky them, Purple seems to love the sound of its own voice. “If the bell didn’t work, boy,” it drawls, “why would the sword?”

Out the corner of his eye, Keith can see that Shiro is taking refuge in a doorway, breathing shallowly and wrapping his injured hand in what looks like black silk. Shiro’s as well as he can be expected to be, and now that he’s out of range of the fight, Keith can really put his back into it.

First things first, though, the beast has a point about the bell. “Why wouldn’t my sword kill you?” Keith snarls, kicking off his back leg to press forwards while Purple was distracted. He manages to push the thing off, stepping back and pulling Samhir from where she was stuck between its stupid claws.

Purple advances again, back bowed to look more like a hulking monster, even though it really didn’t need to make such an effort. “Because, boy, my master has granted me a fraction of Life, and the bell has no power over one that isn’t completely dead!”

It looks so proud of itself, and Keith imagines that if he had the vaguest idea of the intricacies of necromancy he would be too.

But all he hears is that the thing is both more dead and more alive than your average monster, and while Samhir is built to dispatch the dead, she is also just a really, really sharp sword.

And he is a really, really good swordsman. 

Purple lunges at him, and Keith ducks under its stupid jaws and stupid claws, rolling under and rocketing to his feet, Samhir rising with him. 

Where Purple’s claws caught ineffectually on Shiro’s chainmail, Samhir meets no more resistance than fur and tough hide. The look on Purple is one of comical surprise as Keith neatly lops its arm off at the elbow, before skipping back with his sword at the ready.

The wound doesn’t bleed like he had expected it to; instead black gunk oozes out and sticks to itself, like tar holding the wound closer. The arm lands on the floor with a heavy thud, but disconnected from whatever magic keeping the Greater Dead going, it dissolves into ash where it lay.

Keith looks at the patch of dirt on the ground, and then back to Purple. “Not completely dead, huh?” He shifts his centre of gravity the littlest bit, and sees Purple flinch. “Not yet, you mean.”

Purple never had a chance.

-

Keith ends it quickly, as quickly as he can, and he’s turning to head back to Shiro even as Purple is screeching about how the Dead will triumph as it turns wholly to dust.

The sight that greets him is far scarier than anything a Greater Dead could throw at him, and Samhir is sheathed and Keith is kneeling by Shiro’s side in seconds. “Shiro,” he whispers, and cannot explain to himself why he feels like he needs to whisper like he’s at a wake. “Shiro, are you with me?”

Shiro is so, so pale, but he still manages some semblance of a smile. “Yeah. Just maybe not for long.” He’s taken his tunic and chainmail off, and black silk is wrapped tightly all the way from wrist to elbow. His hand is still bleeding sluggishly, and tendrils of dark rot is still inching upwards despite the tourniquet.

It’s almost to the hollow of his elbow now, and it’s a terrible sight. 

They stare for a little while, transfixed by the creeping veins of purple-black that refuse to be stymied by silk and magic strong enough to hold a man in stasis in Death for a hundred years.

“Keith,” Shiro says without looking away from his arm. “If anything happens to me, I want you to-”

That snaps Keith out of his daze faster than a punch to the gut would have. “I  _ am not _ going to lead a charge against the Dead, because you’re going to do it, and you’re going to be  _ fine. _ ” 

Nothing much seems fine, but Keith is getting really sick of people disappearing on him, and him being unable to save people that he most wants to. He’s glaring now, at the source of the infection, and for all that he’s been happy to chide Shiro for being young and inexperienced, right now Keith has never felt more like a useless child.

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, and Keith looks up to see Shiro looking serene, despite the paleness and the cold sweat and the tension from holding in the pain of a dying arm. “I was going to say, I want you to lead my grandmother to safety if you find her, and give her the bells. She’ll take care of everything, don’t worry.” Shiro squeezes, but it’s weak, so weak. “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” he admits, “so you should take the bells and try and get away. It’s not your fight.”

“Of course it’s my fight!” Keith shouts back. “It’s been my fight for longer than you’ve been alive! And I am  _ not _ leaving you here to die, Shiro, so don’t waste your time thinking about it!” He’s breathing hard and his eyes are watering, but Keith refuses to be budged.

They lapse into silence again, and Shiro taps the fingers of his corrupted hand on the floor. “I don’t exactly want you to have to see me die, Keith,” Shiro admits quietly. “It’s not going to be pretty, and I’m not going to meet my end very peacefully. But you, you can fight the Dead and you’re healthy and whole, so you should try to get away, try and find some place safe.” He leans more heavily against the doorjamb, and does not tell Keith that his fingers are tapping but he’s not telling them to. “I’ve heard that Okinawa is nice in winter.”

Keith doesn’t know where or what Okinawa is, but is willing to grasp at any available straw. “I won’t know what that is if you don’t show it to me, Shiro. We’re going to deal with this, and then we’re going to kill some bastard necromancer, and then you can show me what Okinawa looks like in winter.” Think, think, what can he conceivably do to stop this? Why had he been so adamant to focus on combat training to the exclusion of everything else? The cure to an infection caused by the Dead might have been in any of the textbooks he refused to read, and now a young Shirogane is dying because of it.

All he knows about the Dead is that they can be stopped by Samhir, somehow, and-

And…

Keith quickly thinks about all the ways that this is a bad idea, and all the ways that this isn’t. He decides that it has potential, in an absolutely insane way, and that he trusts Shiro to make a decision on it that Keith can and will respect. He picks up Shiro’s injured hand, ignoring how it’s jet black, skin tough and dry, nails turned into claws, and squeezes it between both of his. “I have an idea,” Keith tells him, keeping eye contact with the boy to try and gauge his reaction. “It’s terrible, but it’s what I can think of. I think I can stop the rot if I cut it off, Shiro.” 

Keith knows what he’s asking, and knows that there’s an element of selfishness to wanting Shiro to go through this awful, traumatic thing just so that he can keep going, can keep fighting this impossible fight. But if the Dead are coming, the world needs a Shirogane in the way.

And if Keith has to survive in this new, terrible world, he’d rather do it with this new, not-terrible boy.

So he offers what he has to give, and leaves it up to Shiro to make this miserable, cruel decision.

It’s a quick one.

Shiro groans, and tries to sit up straight. “I guess I am responsible for looking after you, since I brought you back and all.” He moves his bad arm so that it sticks out as far away from his possible, hand resting on the floor because it’s too leaden for him to lift. “Make it quick? And…. Keith? If it doesn’t work, do what you have to do.”

As one, they turn to look at the pile of ash formerly known as Purple, and Keith nods. “Whatever it takes.”

He climbs to his feet, and readies his sword. He aims for just above the elbow, just beyond the furthest tint of sickly purple, and takes a steadying breath. Keith knows he can make a clean cut, hopes that Samhir cauterises the wound as she cleanses it from the corruption, and prays to powers that he doesn’t believe in that Shiro will be okay.

Shiro’s determinedly facing away, chewing at his lower lip and trembling where he sits. They’re both quiet, and the moment comes.

“I trust you, Keith.”

Keith swings.

-

As Keith had hoped, no trace of poison remains after Samhir slices through infection and flesh alike, the blade burning it off and leaving a clean, dry wound. Shiro had passed out after a scream that Keith knows will haunt him for the rest of his days, and the arm had turned into ash as soon as it was detached, so that was one less thing to worry about.

Staying where they are isn’t a good idea. If the Greater Dead could find them, so could others. Keith has no idea of knowing how much pain Shiro will be when he wakes up, if he wakes up. He doesn’t know the extent to which Samhir healed as she cut, doesn’t know if it might start bleeding, doesn’t know if another attack is imminent.

It’s a lot of problems, so Keith solves what he can. He uses the tattered spell silks to wrap the stump securely in the vague hope that it’ll bind pain the way it binds the Dead, and redresses Shiro. The boy is larger than him, but Keith’s spent most of his life raring and preparing for a fight, and it’s not difficult to have him up on Keith’s back and continue their journey towards, oh, almost certain doom.

It’s a long trek, choosing at every corridor to go down the path that gives off a stronger air of death and suffering, but like Shiro heavy on his back, it’s a burden that Keith’s fully ready to carry and see through.

The gentle huffs of deep breathing glancing across the back of his neck is about all the motivation Keith needs to keep his head down and keep going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaah /)A(\ /)A(\ I was supposed to be done by now but then I decided to go back and have Keith have his own chapter too and now here we are many thousands of words in and I'm still reworking stuff. Sorry Victoria!! I hope you'll still enjoy this! The end is in sight, in not even a grim way. 
> 
> [Twitter where it's mostly Shiro and remote sensing memes](https://twitter.com/andthensomelion)


	3. This Boy, Ascendant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the final showdown; old secrets come to light, old allies come in clutch, and all that stands between a plague of Death and the world is Takashi and Keith.
> 
> They do what they can.

When Takashi comes to, everything feels almost normal. He’s being carried, lulled by the gentle steps of the person holding him up, and for a moment it’s like he’s a child again, picked up by his father after he fell asleep in the backyard. There’s even fluffy hair, like when Black hitches a ride too, perched on his father’s shoulder and batting Takash's face with her tail.

Everything feels right and well, until reality snaps back and Shiro flinches so hard he almost falls off of Keith’s back. He tries to grab hold of Keith, tries to avoid slamming to the ground back-first, but where his right arm used to be there is a void, and that is very definitely most certainly _not_ helping with the dawning horror. 

There’s a brief grapple, Takashi half trying to get off, half trying to stay on, and Keith frantically trying to not let him fall. Gravity and panic wins, and Takashi falls, and _what_ a way to end this awful couple of days, oh.

Keith must pull at least fifteen muscles, the way he turns on a dime and reaches for Takashi, face constricted in complete panic. 

They land in a heap with a _thud!_ , and even as he hyperventilates Takashi finds space within his blackening vision and tightening chest to feel deeply touched that Keith’s cradling his head, stopping it from taking the brunt of the smash into cold stone floors.

It’s a short-term solace, and it doesn’t take long before the conspicuous absence of an arm draws his attention again. It feels worse than how he’d imagined dying from corrupt necromantic magic would be; at least he knows what to expect from death, the shape of the experience and the call of the river.

No one’s trained him to expect to lose an arm, and Takashi thinks he might throw up or pass out or, worst of all, both.

Beyond magic and bells and saving the world, Takashi finds himself tearing up because you can't be a one-armed pilot, which means that he's failed his family as a Shirogane, and he’s failed the dream he chased instead of doing his duty. It’s an awful, terrible feeling.

Without him noticing, Keith has pulled him to sit upright, and is worriedly brushing his hair back. Takashi only realises how harsh his breathing is when he hears how calm Keith's is, and he makes a real effort to calm himself again to try and parse the sounds coming out of Keith's mouth.

"-'ve got you, Shiro, just breathe. It's going to be all right."

That's _definitely_ untrue, but Takashi admires Keith's determination. It takes a lifetime for him to get his breathing under control, to will away the turning of his stomach and the panic zipping down his spine, and Takashi thinks he can avoid a complete breakdown so long as he just doesn't look at or acknowledge the extent of his loss.

The entire time Keith keeps contact, gentle strokes to his hair and face, and keeps up his unending stream of reassurance. 

They sit there, until Takashi feels like he's got a grip (!!) on the situation, and he can forcibly stop himself from thinking about…. the loss. It involves gritting his teeth so hard they might turn into literal dust, and facing so, so far the opposite direction his neck is screaming. 

(Better the neck than the mouth, hey.)

"Is," Takashi forces out, "is, I mean. Are you all right?" He can only let himself look one way, but it looks like nothing Big and Purple and Clawed has come to replace the old one, and Keith looks more concerned with him than with mortal peril. "I'm… all right?"

The, ah, loss notwithstanding, Takashi hadn't actually expected to wake up. May not have really _wanted_ to wake up, even, though he won't ever admit that to anyone.

It's been an exhausting too-many-days, and he has to look away from Keith and his fresh face and his two arm-

His… lack of loss.

"I'm trying to get us out of this building," Keith tells him quietly, like he's minding a headache Takashi might have. "I can keep carrying you, don't worry. And you're all right, Shiro. Do you need…" he cuts himself of, because there isn't much of anything in easy supply right now. "If you need something, I swear I _will_ get it for you. Not now, but I will, Shiro, so just tell me what you need."

Water, a bed, something hot to eat, his grandmother, Black, and, god, oh.

He would love a lack of loss. But while Keith has got fire burning in his eyes, it looks like, and just dispatched a Greater Dead with no more than a sharp sword and sharper tenacity, there are so, so many things he cannot give Takashi.

Happily, though, some things are still an option. "I'm going to need you to, to be patient with me," Takashi says with a tremulous smile, "but for now, can I walk a little with you, and can you walk on…. On the side."

Keith seems a little taken aback, then a little offended, then A Lot fired up, more determined even than when he was facing ol' Purple. "Come on," he tells Takashi brusquely even as he helps him to his feet with utmost gentleness. "We'll keep going." Keith is tucked against his side, and Takashi can almost imagine his arm is there behind Keith.

The illusion is solidified when Keith tucks an arm around his waist, grip firm and warm, tilting Takashi a little off-axis so Keith can bear more for him.

There's no shame in crying, Takashi knows and deeply, deeply believes, but the feel of somebody so whole and so there almost gets him started right off when he's trying so hard to keep an even keel.

(He does his absolute best to hold it in because if he starts he won't be able to stop. If he would sometimes pause and stagger as they walk just so that Keith enforces a break, if he takes the slight height advantage he has to press his cheek against Keith's braid and try and ground himself in Keith's dust-and-cloves scent, well.)

(Needs must, and Keith said he would oblige, so.)

-

They make their way up through the labyrinthine hallways and up heavy stone steps; the air grows heavier the closer they get to the surface, the stench of dirty necromancy growing thicker by the second. It's grating on Keith's nerves, and he's so tightly-wound that he wishes something Dead would just come by and attack already, if only for the excuse to work some tension out. Nothing is ideal; some stroke of blessed fortune means that the amputation appears to have spared Shiro the physical agony of losing a limb, but mentally there is…. clearly, there is a lot of pain. Keith is fiercely happy to provide support to Shiro, of course, but Shiro is pressed to his left side, Samhir tucked between them, and that is not the ideal set-up for a swordsman.

They also don't know what they're up against, and they don't know if Shiro can wield the bells in his current state. Keith doesn't know if he can take down a master necromancer with just a sword.

All he knows is that he's happy to die trying.

They're quiet all the way till the exit of the storage building Keith had been housed in, and the sun catches them by surprise, weak and wintry though it might be.

Keith takes a deep breath of frigid air, and shudders with the colossal relief of it. His lungs remember that they've forgotten air, it feels like, and the sheer physicality of being alive hits home now, the way there's so much to feel here where things were muffled and quiet in Death and underground.

His eyes get shamefully wet as he drags in another deep breath, reflexively clutching Shiro tighter to his side. In the cold air, the body beside him feels warmer, more solid and more immediate.

_Life is good_ , Keith finds himself thinking blearily. It's good and it's why they're fighting and Keith might be a man out of time but Shiro isn't. Shiro has things to fight for and live for and protect, so Keith will try to safeguard that, safeguard him, with whatever he has left.

The sun gently lighting up everything in its path, the give of the ground beneath his boots, the heavy snow weighing down the pine trees, the unmistakable sensation of _home_ , helps Keith settle within himself. Realigns him with his sense of purpose, clarifies the things most important to remember. He's not a magician of any kind, but it still feels like power is gathering in his body, this fantastical sensation of being alive.

Next to him, Shiro is also gasping down breath like a drowning man who's broken the surface, and there is clearly evil gathering nearby, in the direction of the Lionstone if Keith had to make a guess, but right now they can afford some peace. Decision made, Keith shepherds them over to a low stone wall, brushing snow off its top with a wide sweep of his arm. He drops Shiro's pack to the ground, and helps him hop up and take a seat. The boy is far too pale, paler still from his most recent ordeal, and some sun is better than none. Keith pulls his leather gauntlets off, glad that he tends to run warm even at the worst of times, and presses his hands to Shiro's cheeks.

It's an inexcusable invasion of personal space, but right now all Keith wants is to see the boy awash in colour, even if it's just a splash of pink from a bit of warmth.

Shiro makes a soft, pleased sound in the back of his throat, eyes closing as he leans into Keith's warm hands, and Keith, oh.

Keith gets a crawl of heat up his cheeks too, that he stubbornly decides to ignore. "We can take some time to recuperate," he says firmly, even as he struggles to make ugly calloused hands gentle, "so just sit here and take in some sun for a while, while I go investigate. Do you have food in your pack?"

Shiro nods without opening his eyes, and Keith has to seriously consider his desire to pity himself for his bad luck, when Shiro went from a young boy to the Shirogane responsible for staving off the end of the world almost overnight, and yet still finds it within himself to be this sweet and trusting.

It's not a competition, is the decision he comes to. It's not a competition between them, and if they both make it to the end, then that's more luck than either of them have gotten so far. So he rummages in Shiro's pack to find food, which is hard to do with one hand but, right now, impossible to do with two.

Something squishes under his fingers, and Keith pulls out what looks like rice balls in wax cloth. Unwrapped, they look a bit of a mess, gone cold and hard and crumbly, but Keith's stomach takes this moment to make a 100-year-old complaint heard, and growls like an upset hound.

That's enough to make Shiro laugh, eyes opening in an amused squint. "Thanks, Keith, but I don't think we should be haring off on our own. C'mon, come sit with me and we can eat and plan."

Keith still has pent-up energy that he wants to get out by beating up some Dead, but who is he to turn down a request from the best Shirogane he's ever met? He pulls away reluctantly, hopping up on the wall without bothering to knock the snow off first. Even the bite of cold feels like a declaration of being alive, so different to the tepid chill of the other side. “What’s there to plan? There’s someone out there planning to take over the world, channelling out hordes of the Dead through the Lionstone here. Something must have happened to Kokugyoku, because they somehow perverted the power for evil, so _maybe_ if we can get it working back to normal, we can stand a chance. We fight, and either we win, or we don’t.”

The rice crunches under his teeth, which is not what properly cooked rice should do, but Keith isn’t going to turn down something to eat, nor would he turn down anything Shiro’s made.

He isn’t going to sugarcoat things either, even if Shiro’s now looking at him with a strange, grim sadness.

-

It’s amazing, the things that can slip your mind when you’ve been fighting for your life for days on end. Takashi hates that he has to be the one to break the news, but better now than later, with somebody who might not know how Keith got here.

“Keith,” Takashi says, hesitant and careful. “Keith, this must have happened after you were taken out of action, but…. Kokugyoku was broken. She was broken during the attack on the last of the Royal Family, and we’re coming up to the 100-year anniversary soon. The…. The prince consort was sacrificed on top of it, and the queen and her son probably got sacrificed elsewhere, but the stone broke that day, and magic has been draining out of Tokyo ever since.”

Keith is still as a statue at this news, and Takashi can imagine that it’s jarring, and borderline unbelievable. Whatever period Keith is from, it’s obviously during a time when Tokyo (maybe even Edo, back then) was flush with magic, and the heirs to the Chrysanthemum throne were the resplendent caretakers of Kokugyoku, the most important of the Lionstones. It’s a lot to accept, the thinness of magic in the air and the discovery that the royal bloodline’s gone, and all that’s left is a distorted gate that’s letting in all that it’s meant to keep out. Takashi doesn’t know the words to offer comfort, doesn’t know if there are words that would work here. If Keith was one of the palace’s guardsmen, responsible for the safety of the family, then he has to contend with not only failing his wards, but also with the loss of his comrades-in-arms. 

Takashi tries to imagine what he might feel like, if he woke up tomorrow and someone told him all that his friends at the Garrison, all the children at the magic houses of the other Lionstone guardians, everyone he’s ever loved and been loved by are at best dead, and at worst, murdered, and it hits a little too close to home for him to keep thinking that way.

Keith remains unmoving, barely even breathing, and Takashi wonders what he’s seeing with that faraway look in his eyes. It can’t be anything good, and it’s not going to get any better. There’s not a lot that he can do right now to help, and even if things somehow miraculously work out, all Takashi has on offer is an empty house in Shiga and an eternal inability to shake hands ever again.

He shakes his head, clears out the more dire and dour thoughts. Two arms are better than one, but one’s better than being converted into a miserable creature bound to a Greater Dead. Keith’s not all right right now, the trauma might mean that Keith won’t be all right for a long time, and that’s true for Takashi too.

They don’t have a lot of things, but right now they at least have each other, and it’s so nice to have someone so human with him after that dreadful night where Black played messenger with the bandolier, that Takashi is moved to express his appreciation, to reassure Keith that he won’t leave Keith alone now, like he didn’t leave Keith alone when he was in Death.

So Takashi reaches out, driven by a sudden desperation to remind Keith that he won’t go through this alone. He throws himself over their little mound of almost-inedible rice balls, because Keith having someone with him ties with Takashi having someone with him, and they have to count these little miracles in these troubling times.

Usually graceful, Takashi doesn’t account for the now-uneven weight distribution of his own damn self, and a quick hug turns into him tackling Keith right off the wall they’re sitting on, clear into a snowdrift on the other side.

Takashi might be the most awkward and uncoordinated he’s ever been, but even being surprised by the entire weight of a heavy 19-year-old festooned in bells Keith reacts like an abject veteran, protectively cradling Takashi to his chest and covering the back of Takashi’s head with a strong, warm palm.

They lie there for a bit, legs still sprawled on the wall, snow melting into their hair and coats.

Keith breaks the silence, but doesn’t break his hold. “Do I want to know why you just attacked me?” he asks, words a little mean but tone startlingly gentle.

Takashi doesn’t want to move from this extremely comfortable position, and so, doesn’t. “I’m sorry history already happened and you’re hurt. This was supposed to be a hug.”

They lapse into silence again, before Takashi feels Keith’s chest rumbling underneath him in a low laugh. “This is a good hug. Thank you.”

Thinking it over, Takashi also has to admit that this makes into his top-5 all-time best-hugs, and just burrows in deeper against unforgiving padded armour. “Any time, Keith.”

He hopes Keith understands that he means that in every way he could mean it.

-

They don’t get up from where they landed, even as the snow melts into their hair and foretells a future full of miserable head colds, even when the hunk of rock at Keith’s lower back goes from being mildly uncomfortable to profoundly painful. They lie there, and plan vaguely for a few minutes before they lose steam. It’s hard to keep morale high when the prospect of literal Death looms so clearly on the horizon, so Keith doesn’t insist they go back to strategizing when Shiro gets distracted and starts talking about how in the summer he used to go fishing with his family on Lake Biwa, barbecuing their meager gains in the backyard while actual lunch was made in the kitchen, and how the fish there are so filled with magic that they taste like static on the tongue.

The Chrysanthemum throne fell the night he was spirited away, of that Keith is absolutely, unshakably certain. It’s starting to become clear why the Shirogane of the time took him, and there’s a vague hope that the man may have pulled the same thing off with others too, but Kokugyoku is definitely broken, and that definitely means something Keith is very keen not to get into. 

There are a lot of things Keith is very keen not to get into, especially not in Shiro’s steady, kind presence, but happily a showdown with an awful necromancer isn’t one of them. He lets Shiro talk himself into a lull, lets the talk of fish and home and warm summers and fireworks fade out, before he takes a fortifying breath and hauls them both upright.

Shiro makes a startled sound at that, but Keith’s built stronger than he looks. In these thankless times, it’s something to hold on to. “I think,” he tells Shiro, looking him straight in the eyes, “it’s time to go.”

Shiro sighs, and staggers to his feet, overcompensating for his injury and thudding none-too-gently into the low wall. “You’re right. No point in putting it off.” He sounds like a boy skimming the tips of defeat, but resolutely holding on in spite of it.

“You don't understand,” Keith says intently, letting Shiro find his own balance, find out for himself what he can do and what he might need from Keith. “I want to deal with this bastard as quickly as possible, so that you can show me the outdoor enchanted hot springs you say you have at your home.” Keith’s skills don’t tend to extend to being particularly sociable or charming, but he gives it a go with the bloody-mindedness he applies to all things he applies himself to. “I have been promised a cedar tub and hot water, and I have not bathed in _decades_. So we’re going to finish up here, you can show me your home, and in return I will show you how to fish.”

Keith empathetically _does not_ know how to fish, only has the vaguest concept of what fish look like outside the fat, pretty koi of the ponds in the palace, but he likely won’t be called out on that lie till summer at the earliest. It’s plenty of time to become proficient at a sport.

Shiro blinks and takes a moment to process what Keith has said, before he bursts into laughter. “I’m glad to see that’s what you take away from me rambling for a half-hour, Keith.” He starts packing the food away, awkward and slow, but in considerably better spirits than before. “C’mon, I think we’re in the Fukiage gardens now, so we’re close to the palace and the stone.” 

The garden is still called the same name, Keith finds himself a little pleased to hear. They won’t need a map for the sprawling grounds, because the epicentre of rotten magic is pretty easy to sense. The world still feels quiet and hushed under the heavy snow, and it’s good that there’s no stampede of awful Dead coming for them. Keith spares a moment to wonder why; Purple had found them with little to no problem, and it didn’t make sense for their opponent to just let them run free, minor players though they may be.

The simplest explanation is that their forces are divided; perhaps a simultaneous attack to tear down the other Lionstones? Hopefully the appointed guardian families are kicking up a hell of a flight, which is proving to be a distraction. It’s a thin hope that Keith’s going to keep both hands around, as he leads Shiro towards the source of the rot.

They proceed in a strange manner; Shiro slings his bag so that the weight of it helps him counterbalance, and Keith, oh, Keith _knows_ he’s not being particularly helpful, but he keeps flitting between taking point and defending Shiro’s back. For every step Shiro takes Keith takes about five, and Shiro just takes it in his stride. Keith’s grateful; it’s a dumb but harmless way of burning off his energy, and he feels full to the brim with a desperate need to lash out and hit something.

The feeling gets worse as they creep closer towards the palace itself, and the courtyard where everything took place. Keith’s skin is actively crawling now, goosebumps in perpetual motion, and he’s whizzing around Shiro with his sword half-drawn like a dizzy moon aggressively and speedily spinning around the Earth. If he moves quickly enough, his after-shadow can act like a shield, maybe. Keith is ready to walk furrows into the ground at this rate, but he’s stopped in his tracks by Shiro’s hand catching him around the waist.

Samhir is all the way out before Keith even turns to look at Shiro, so tightly on alert his spine may snap at any moment. Shiro doesn’t look concerned, though, just distracted. “Can you feel that?” he asks Keith, voice as soft as the falling snow.

Keith carefully shifts so that he’s in a better position to fend off an attack. “You need to be a little more specific.” There’s a lot to feel right now, tension in the air somehow crawling up the backs of his eyes, feels like.

Shiro keeps looking around, like a dog trying to catch a scent. “Do you know if the Shirogane from your time tucked anyone else away in Death?” Shiro frowns, and starts heading off towards a cluster of gnarled pine trees, ancient and low. “Somebody else is stuck, I think.”

Somebody…. else? Hope runs through Keith so strongly and so keenly it makes his eyes burn. Did the Shirogane manage to make another rescue? Is he not alone, here? Surely if anybody was to be saved, it would be somebody from the royal family. Surely that’s the case, surely-

While overcome with conjecture, Shiro had disappeared from Keith’s field of view, ducked under and through the low-hanging branches into a frosted-over thicket. Keith’s heart is in his throat for an entirely different reason when he hears Shiro’s yelp, and he feels absolutely zero remorse in slicing clean through shrubbery to see what Shiro sees.

Disappointment rolls in in slow, lazy waves, taking its time to make sure he really, really feels it. There’s a woman there, sat in a simple white robe in a tiny clearing, almost entirely hidden from view by the sheer amount of strips of silver-and-black enchantment. There’s no snow on or around her, and when Keith reaches to try and pull back the spell strips for a better look, it burns his hand.

Shiro’s crouched on the ground by him, breathing ragged. Keith’s about to ask him if he’s okay, despite the absolute meaninglessness of asking such a thing, when Shiro manages to gasp out a “Baba!”, and things-

Become clear.

-

Takashi is in shock, which somehow still feels novel after all the shocking things that have happened recently. Why is his grandmother here, swathed in so much spell-silk that it could hide her from everyone but another Shirogane? She doesn’t seem to be breathing, but after Keith, Takashi knows that that doesn’t mean anything. He’s finding it a little hard to breathe around the relief, and calms down a little when he feels Keith’s hand at his nape, steady and careful.

“Shiro, what do you want me to do?” Keith doesn’t ask for any sort of explanation, and Takashi’s grateful, because he has no idea what’s going on. 

“I need to wake her up,” Takashi hears himself saying, an echo from somewhere far away. The sensation had felt similar to Keith’s attachment to his stone body, but this close, things are unfortunately clear. Takashi knows what it feels like for his grandmother to come back into herself, knows it as well as he knows the crags and valleys of the Astral Plane, and while the barrier keeps her spirit attached to her body, that thread that holds them together….isn’t there.

She’s not beyond the ninth gate, he knows that, can feel that, and no doubt it’s thanks to her skill and her cunning and her power.

But she’s not tethered to her body, and he _knows_ that, can _feel_ that too, and Takashi thought that he’s already had to face enough complex, demoralising dilemmas to fill up a lifetime.

He tries to think of what he can do, and in his bandolier, Mosrael growls and vibrates. The Waker is awake, and ready to be of service. Takashi firmly pushes down the powerful desire to start screaming and not stop. He needs to use Mosrael to pull his grandmother back to life because he can’t go fetch, and he can’t go fetch because there’s no tether, and there’s no tether because-

Takashi takes a deep breath, and tells himself to do what he can and not fixate on what he can’t. “Keith, you need to close your ears when I ring Mosrael. I’m going to climb into the circle and the wards should keep you safe, but she’s a tricky bell. My grandmother will come back and I’m going to be thrown into Death, so please let her know what’s going on, and just wait till I come back.”

Keith growls from somewhere above him, and the hand at his nape tightens. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Shiro.”

Short a hand to reach back and clasp Keith, Shiro just leans into the touch. “You’re going to have to. I’m trusting you with her, okay, Keith?”

They’re at a standoff for a little while, but Keith relents, eventually. Takashi is starting to notice that for how snappy and sharp-edged Keith had seemed at the start, the man is actually incredibly kind and patient with him.

It gives him strength, when Keith finally lets go and stations himself with his back towards the spell-silks, sword at the ready facing the direction of the palace. “Go and come back quickly, Shiro,” Keith tells him.

Takashi nods even though Keith can’t see him, and carefully climbs under the silk, the spells yielding under the touch of a Shirogane, giving him enough space to wiggle in. He’s never used Mosrael, and he doesn’t know how far into Death he might be flung when he brings his grandmother back, so better safe than sorry. Struggling a little, Takashi strips off the bandolier, the Shirogane tunic, and the chainmail. The air is still and lukewarm in the circle, which he’s thankful for, dressed as he is in just his undershirt.

Amiya sits there on folded legs, eyes closed and face serene, back as straight as a board. She looks like she’s just resting, the way she would sit on the balcony to absorb some sun on lazy days at home, Black on her lap. Takashi can barely breathe to look at her, can’t stop from reaching over and squeezing her hand, tries to calm his screaming heart.

“Keith?”

“Yes, Shiro?”

“It’s going to be okay, please believe me. Just close your ears, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

Keith’s soft sigh floats over and into the protected circle, but Takashi hears him shift to do as asked.

“All right,” Takashi says softly to himself, licking dry lips. He fumbles for Mosrael’s holster, and he swings.

-

Keith doesn’t hear anything, but the ringing feels like a heavy weight slamming into his back. He staggers forwards, and makes himself count down from ten before he uncovers his ears and unsheathes Samhir. He turns, hoping against hope to see Shiro there, and is instead faced with a small woman with iron-gray hair carefully untying the spell-silks and rolling them up in her fist. She’s still in her white kimono, bandolier slung over a shoulder instead of across her chest. 

Their eyes meet, and quick as a snake her hand’s on a bell as soon as she spots his sword.

Keith notes with some concern that she’d gone for the largest bell with zero hesitation, flinty-eyed in her resolve as she carefully unsnaps it.

Unsure of what exactly he should do to convince this terrifying woman, Keith slowly goes to his knees, and lays Samhir in front of him. “I’m here with your grandson, Shiro,” he says as calmly as he can. “I won’t hurt you, and I won’t let anything hurt him, I swear to you on my family's honour. He told me he would wake you and then come back.” Keith shifts his weight to the balls of his feet, trying to figure out if he could wrestle the bandolier off this woman if she decides that he isn’t worth listening to, and whether or not he could do it without hurting her.

It’s not looking good.

She doesn’t make any further movement, instead choosing to stare at him with a faintly puzzled expression. “Have we met before?”

Keith can’t stop the short, sharp laugh that pushes out of him. “I doubt it, ma’am. Your grandson rescued me on his way here, and I’m helping him with whatever he needs.”

The woman doesn’t seem appeased, though her hand does drop from the bell. “You may call me Amiya. You know who I am?”

Keith nods, absently wondering if Shiro inherited much of anything from this iron-and-teeth lady. “The Shirogane. Shiro mentioned it when he came to save me.”

She nods, looking satisfied. “And I think I know who you are, _Keith_. It wasn’t information I had thought to pass on to my grandson yet, but I am glad to see my…. great-great grandfather, I suppose, managed to get at least you to safety.”

Oh. Keith very carefully doesn’t flinch, though that may be a tell in itself. At this point, he would be more than happy to share his history with Shiro, and having this woman just _know_ makes him feel a little unpleasantly exposed. “I will tell him once everything that needs doing is done, ma’-... Amiya.” He gets to his feet, Samhir back in her sheath, and tries not to growl when he talks. “Do you know when Shiro will be back?”

Amiya had returned to spooling up the spell-silks, but some of the ice and the stiffness in her jaw seems to have melted away at the mention of her grandson. “I wasn’t too far in when he woke me, so Takashi should be back soon. Help me with these silks, won’t you?”

It doesn’t escape Keith’s notice that she had first given what he can only assume is her true name, and has now casually given him Shir-, _Takashi’s_. For whatever ounce of discomfort he feels with her knowing the circumstances leading up to his presence here, she has repaid him back with trust that extends to the lives of the only two people capable of keeping the balance of Life and Death.

_There it is_ , thinks Keith. That trait must be inherited, the ability to make out the worth of a person at a glance, and the willingness to believe that the good they see in someone is something worth trusting. 

Keith lets go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding, before going to help her take down the spells. “Takashi is going to be really glad to see you,” he says politely, truthfully. “It’s been a difficult few days for him.”

Amiya snorts, tugging on a short strip of silk off an errant branch, and using it to tie back her long hair in a formidable high ponytail. “Thank you for understating the hell Takashi would have gone through in my absence. I received word that an unusually large number of the Dead had come up here in Tokyo and came to dispatch them just days ago.” She sighs, gingerly taking a seat on a large rock. “I was going to swing by Takashi’s school and surprise him with dinner afterwards. Instead, I found Zarkon and Haga summoning armies, and while I managed to incapacitate them, the witch severed my spirit from my body.” She sighs, looking at the neatly-folded tunic and chainmail. ”I suspect my husband is likely raising hell to find me after the armour apparated home with my….death. I hope they haven’t killed him.” A slightly longer pause. “You know how they are.”

Given that they were the original guardians of Kokugyoku, in full possession of the trust of the Chrysanthemum throne when they turned rogue, and that they were the ones that had raised an army and mounted an assault on the palace… Yes, Keith has to admit that he knows how they are.

Amiya looks mildly irritated at best, for someone discussing a life-and-death fight that didn’t go her way. “I knocked them into Death and hoped that would buy me time to, to _reattach_ , but…” She subsides into silence, and Keith is at a complete loss of what to say.

She doesn’t seem to mind. Amiya rubs at her left knee, complaining under her breath about sticky joints and miserable winters. “I _am_ dead,” she tells Keith, calm and composed even as she grits her teeth so hard her words come out almost as a hiss. “Mosrael can hold me here for a while, enough that I can help you and Takashi, but when I have to go… Could you do me a favour?”

Keith stands by her side, looking intently into the now-empty clearing, waiting for Takashi to come back to life. “Anything,” he says, meaning it with his entire heart.

“Keep this between us. I, hah, I’ll tell him once everything that needs doing is done,” she says, echoing his words from before. “He’s had to deal with Death enough already, and he’s going to keep having to deal with it from now on. I just want to spare him for as a long as I can.”

It’s a feeling Keith understands whole-heartedly, so he nods, and shrugs off his padded, armoured jacket to wrap around her shoulders when she starts shivering a little.

They sit, and they wait, and- 

Takashi stumbles back into life with a rapt audience anxiously awaiting his arrival.

-

Takashi doesn’t think he will ever, ever see a sight so heartening as bursting into the clearing to see his grandmother and Keith looking at him, instantly by his side to catch him. He’s forgotten, somehow, his grandmother’s ability to be so quiet and quick, her steady stare and the strength in her fingers as she turns his face to look at her. 

“Hello, Takkun,” she says, as fond and stern as she’s always been, and tears spring to Takashi’s eyes well beyond his ability to control them.

“Hi, baba,” he whispers back, smiling so wide everything hurts. She barely comes up to his shoulders, but when she pulls him down for a hug, Takashi couldn’t resist her any more than he could resist the pull on his feet to the ground.

She doesn’t mention his loss, doesn’t mention the scabbed over mess on his nose, doesn’t unleash the horrors she’s had to go through over the past few days. He hiccoughs and squeezes her harder, fully amazed by how she somehow still smells like cedar and the olive flowers Takashi loves and is severely allergic to.

This reunion could go on forever and it still wouldn’t be enough of an opportunity to show his full relief at seeing her here, solid and real and whole, but time’s not a friend to any of them right now, so Takashi pulls away to give her a crooked smile. “Have you met Keith yet?”

She nods, fussily pulling the Shirogane’s tunic over his head. “I did, and who told you to take this off? And _what_ have I said about letting the bells out of your sight? Shirogane Takashi, if you weren’t so tall I would pull your ear and make you copy lines from the Arcana.” 

Takashi shudders despite himself. A lot of his youth was spent copying lines from magical texts after a little too much exuberance running around the house with Black. “Baba, I left them for you!”

“And I’m not the Shirogane, so that was a bad idea twice over.” She’s buckling the bandolier snugly across his chest as she says it, and Takashi is distracted enough that he doesn’t register that she’s called him by his full name, and oh, he hasn’t even told it to Keith yet himself, Keith’s going to think Takashi doesn’t trust him, when what actually happened is that Takashi tends to hyper-focus on a task and then forget nice normal things like _giving a proper introduction once you've become proper friends_.

He turns to look at Keith, preemptively apologetic, but settles quickly into a slightly embarrassed grin when Keith just snorts and rolls his eyes at him. “Nice to meet you, Keith,” he says, still. “Do you want to know anything else before we get going?”

Keith shakes his head, absently brushing snow off of first Takashi’s, then Amiya’s shoulders. “Your grandmother needs to catch you up about who we’ll be facing. They’re the ones that were responsible for the battle in my time, too, so I’m happy to take the fight to them now.”

History, as it pertains to magical revolutions, isn’t taught in Tokyo because so many people are so far removed from magic here, and his studies as a Shirogane didn’t exactly focus on events in the living world. Takashi can hazily think of a handful of brutal battles that took place at the palace, the most important one being the breaking of Kokugyoku, but while all the evil necromancers in the records had been put down, false and true names erased to make them harder to trace, being ‘put down’ can be a pretty ephemeral concept for people that walk between Life and Death. He knows the names of the Shiroganes who have died in fights, but that’s a different issue in and of itself. At most, he thinks there are maybe three who just died quietly and peacefully of old age, with a well-trained replacement ready in the wings. 

The streak of non-peaceful deaths is likely to continue today, and Takashi winces at the thought. It hasn’t been a pleasant affair thus far, and he can only imagine it’s about to get worse. He picks up his pack, feels a lot like a child playing dress-up to be dressed in full regalia while his grandmother is right _there_ , and clears his throat. “All right, then. Let’s go? And baba, what are we going to be dealing with here?”

They fall into line, Takashi at the front and Keith guarding the rear, Amiya in the middle and unable to look over either of their heads. Under normal circumstances, Takashi is sure she would vehemently protest, but under _these_ circumstances, she’s the least armed (oh, what a thought) of them all, and that’s not something she can argue against. They make their way quietly out of the copse of ancient pine trees, the palace looming forebodingly in the foreground. Takashi’s not particularly pleased that they’re downwind of the palace; it’s a lot of sick air straight to the face.

Amiya answers him almost absent-mindedly, wrapping spell-silks around her hands and as far up her arms as she can manage. “There will be two of them. The man’s called Zarkon, and he’s a powerful necromancer. You know how they can get, Takkun, wanting to rule Life and all that, but there’s a good chance he can actually manage it because he’s got Kokugyoku under his control.” She pauses, and pulls at a fold by her right elbow so that she gets more movement. “Speaking of, where’s Black?”

That’s a strange tangent, Takashi thinks, noticeable only because his grandmother usually needed a lot of persuasion to be stopped from completing a thought. “Oh. Uhm. Black came and gave me the bells and Samhir at my dorm, and when I went home an army of the Dead came with me. I got the defensive spells up and running, baba, but she’s there holding the fort. You said there are two of them?” he gently prods.

The sound Amiya makes isn’t unlike a cat hacking up something distasteful. “The woman’s a lot worse. We don’t know either of their true names, obviously, but she’s called Haga. Not a necromancer, but they’ve done…. _something_ , and she isn’t all alive. There’s a lot of magic in her. Think of a Greater Dead, then think of the power of a dozen of them, forced into the body and mind of a lunatic about my size, with a side of Free Magic burning through her veins.” Amiya clicks her tongue. “She’s the worst of them, by far.”

Twelve Greater Dead in one package, this terrifying lady, this Greatest Dead. Takashi tries to ignore his pounding heart and pounding head; he’s already lost a limb to just Purple, and he doesn’t have a dozen more to spare for this witch woman. This is all without taking into consideration that Takashi’s greatest skill is in traversing Death, and harnessing Free Magic is well beyond his meager skillset.

He thinks things over, trying to suss this out. There’re three of them, for one, so they have numbers on their side. Amiya is a terrifyingly competent sorceress in her own right, whereas Keith has shown a frightening ability to subdue threats regardless of their liveliness. Something stirs at the back of his mind, and it’s harebrained but it’s also not as unreasonable as their circumstances. “Baba,” Takashi says slowly, working it out as he goes. “Baba, if this Zarkon is very dangerous because he has Kokugyoku under him, can’t we control it back? I know that the guardian of this main Lionstone is supposed to be the royal family and their loyal followers,” Takashi pauses and winces in sympathy when he hears Keith suck in a quick breath, hoping to skim pass that sore spot as best he’s able, “but we’re the Shirogane. Can’t we…. switch it off?”

“Are Lionstones things that you can just switch on and off?” Keith’s voice floats up from the back, terse and tense, and Takashi winces again.

“You both have half a point,” Amiya says thoughtfully. “The corruption and the break is what’s allowing Zarkon to distort the vale enough that the Dead can march on through, and if you could un-break it, that would cut them off from a lot of power. But Keith’s right, too. It took spilled royal blood to break it, Takkun. It won’t come back together if we just ask nicely.”

So there _is_ a chance. Takashi runs his fingers down the bells, and the Thinker hums at him persuasively. “Okay, okay.” Close to the outermost wings of the ancient palace, Takashi draws them to a halt, huddled together by a wall. 

This is the team that will fend off the end of the world: a Shirogane with 3 days worth of training and one arm, an elderly woman intending to fist-fight necromancy into submission, and an ancient man made modern holding a sword and meaning it. 

What a sight they make. He can’t help the little burble of manic laughter, but it’s not all bad mania, which is as good as a small win in these dire days. “I think I have a plan,” Takashi whispers, “and you need to let me know how bad of an idea it is.”

There are a lot of protests as he goes along with, with Keith and Amiya working in lockstep to highlight the many, many glaring faults of Takashi’s scheme. Takashi talks them down from their myriad harsh rejections, soothes and gentles and reiterates the things that need to be said, because it took all of 30 seconds, maybe, for him to cotton on to the fact that the majority of their grievances were rooted in their worry for him.

Takashi’s the last person they should be worried about here, he is by far the most _expendable_ , even if he won’t say it out loud in case they draw the villains out with how loudly Amiya and Keith both shout at him.

They argue and fight and Keith once again looks ready to draw Samhir on him, before the option of the time to discuss and plan further is ripped from them.

The weak sunlight flickers off abruptly as the sky turns a sickly bruised purple, and that’s all the warning they get before the wall they’re hidden behind explodes into splinters of stone.

“They’re here,” Amiya hisses as she deflects with her silk-wrapped arm. The spell-silks are fantastically magicked but she is still, at body, an elderly woman, so Takashi doesn’t think twice before he’s stepped in front of her to take the brunt of the explosion.

It’s an unexpected sensation to feel Keith apparently throw himself on top of Takashi too, but it’s endlessly more welcome than shrapnel in the shoulder. As a pile, a singular creature with three pairs of legs and one common goal, they tumble and roll out of the blast radius to take refuge behind some twisted low trees.

The trees catch fire about two seconds after that, and Takashi thinks a nice long nap really wouldn’t go amiss right now.

-

Japan’s changed an awful lot in a hundred years, Keith knows. Lights light up without fire, ironwork is everywhere, and Takashi is taller than most any man Keith knows from his time. He doesn’t begrudge the changes, not really, but it would be _nice_ if non-combat-trained Takashi would stop throwing himself in harm’s way while being just far too large for Keith to cover completely.

He hopes Amiya is all right underneath this dogpile. 

He hustles them deeper into the tangle of trees, keeps his back to them and his sword up to welcome whatever’s coming for them. He hopes it’s Zarkon. He really, really hopes it’s Zarkon. For all that he absolutely _loathes_ Takashi’s plan, they make tactical sense for their complete lack of any resources.

It’s going to be a dirty, bloody brawl as he and Amiya try to buy time for Takashi to pull together a miracle for Kokugyoku, and being found out before they could manage a sneak attack is _awful_. They’re going to have to split up, and Keith can’t think of any idea he likes less, right now. 

The explosions cease for now, but there’s a swell and then a crest of rotten power; as one, they all flinch. Even for Keith who is inexperienced with necromancy, this close to the source the sensation of Dead being brought over is unmistakeable.

“We don’t have time,” Takashi says urgently from somewhere behind Keith. “I’m going to make a break for Kokugyoku, and try to make it remember being whole. Please do what you can, Keith, baba, and I’ll come and help when I'm done.”

Keith doesn’t even get to fit in a token protest before Takashi is sprinting unevenly away, under the cover of trees and exploded rocks. This is not how it’s supposed to go, not again, not another abject defeat-!

He’s brought back to the present, away from the screaming and fire and brimstone, by Amiya’s harsh grip on his arm. “We need you to be here, now, Your Majesty,” she says with a complete lack of humour. “We don’t have any other options but to follow along with Takashi’s plans. I’ll try to subdue the horrible woman with some spell silk binding; good luck taking on Zarkon.” Her eyes follow the slow progression of Takashi towards the epicentre, a shining black jewel on the blanket of white, white snow, and Keith feels the tremble in her hold.

Blood’s still pounding in his ears, but a steady calm seeps into him; a trained warrior about to meet a vicious battle. 

He can do this, thinks Keith. He must.

Keith squeezes Amiya’s hand, and thinks about loyalty and the dedication of oneself to another. “Go,” he whispers. “I’m going to run right into the centre, and make enough of a racket to hide you and Takashi. Take care of yourself, ma’am.”

He doesn’t wait for her response because he fully expects to meet up with her and Takashi at the end of all this for a long session of vicious complaining about Zarkon and Haga, preferably while their feet are soaking in a bewitched hot spring and sake flows freely.

It’s the image Keith keeps in his mind as he runs out into the open, Samhir drawn and whistling as she slices through the air and through the decrepit bodies of some Dead freshly brought over. There aren’t that many of them yet, but the crowd grows and grows the closer he gets to the courtyard where Kokugyoku rests. It’s a struggle not to be distracted, looking at the verandas he used to while away lazy evenings on, the ginko tree in the corner that was ancient even in his time, that familiar dark red of the tiles on the roof that encircle this central courtyard.

He hacks through another half a dozen disintegrating bodies, and leaps over the wreckage of the destroyed wall and eastern wing of the central courtyard.

Kokugyoku stands in the middle of it all, taller than the roof and cloven right in half, black as pitch and hissing violet sparks. Around the Lionstone the world is hazy and gray and the ground is roiling like a turbulent sea. The Dead are pouring out like ants from a disturbed nest, and with every passing moment the odds of them becoming completely overwhelmed tick higher and higher.

There’s not a lot of time to spare, so Keith puts away the grief at seeing Kokugyoku this way, tries to forget how constantly amazed he had been at how the stone seemed to get endlessly darker in the noonday sun in summer, forget the hours he had spent peering into the glossy depths and finding entire universes hidden in flecks of light.

There’s just no time, so Keith keeps his body moving and his mind quiet. Ignores the dancing flames from a fight already lost, and focuses instead on the memory of Amiya’s hold on his arm, Takashi’s weight on his front, the things that still need fighting for. 

He decapitates a massive hulking dog thing, a Greater Dead in the making, and turns to point his sword at Zarkon, that great betrayer, the killer of queens, who sits at the base of the stone with an expression of bored malice. 

Zarkon looks nothing like the tall, gruff man of a century ago, square-jawed and serious as he followed after the Queen and the visiting Shirogane and talked about wards and spells and Death as they went round and round and round the Lionstone while Keith watched from behind a paper door.

This Zarkon, fully corrupt, is half again as tall as he used to be, skin hardened and mottled and tinged the green of a wound gone foul. He has fangs too long for his mouth and a long thin tail, and his eyes are a sickly yellow with slits for pupils.

Oh, Keith could almost laugh as the monstrous hulking thing climbs to his feet, looking at Keith like a giant would at a bug.

The man who had betrayed the Chrysanthemum throne, his liege and her family, has in his undeath become what he was in life.

“Zarkon, you snake! Come and fight me!”

And Keith charges.

-

There are a thousand things going on at once, and a thousand more that Takashi knows he’s already missed. Keith had not hesitated for even the briefest of moments before he had plunged towards the corrupted necromancer, and it’s electricity in Takashi’s bones to see Keith parrying wicked talons and dispatching summons back into dust with Samhir faster than Zarkon can summon them. Even in his wildest predictions Takashi had not actually expected for Keith to go for the direct approach, much less that he would actually succeed at it.

Keith’s a vision, braid swinging and the red-gold of his padded armour seeming to gather all the light in this accursed place to shine and blaze in place of the absent sun.

Takashi looks at Keith and his flurry of blows, and sees hope. 

He blinks away the tears of reverence from where he’s crouched under an upturned tree, and looks further afield, outside the courtyard where the Dead are slowly congregating around a hunched-over woman in a heavily embroidered robe and hood. She’s as green-tinted as the man, long wispy white hair dripping from under her cloak, and from this far away he can’t hear the words in her screams, but it’s obvious who has her ire.

Takashi almost wants to laugh. Haga the witch might be a frightful sorcerer with her army of the undead, but Shirogane Amiya has the dubious distinction of being a reasonably powerful Shirogane and an unreasonably powerful sorcerer. His grandmother didn’t often use her magic because apparently burning too much of it meant she would be too weak to walk into Death, and losing access to the other side isn’t an acceptable risk for a Shirogane.

Now, though, she’s wild and uncaring with it, and oh, when Takashi had heard that she was powerful, he had mostly thought about the dozen little spells she has around the house that keeps it clean and the garden verdant and the motorcar in good repair.

Small magicks are already impressive when even a high-ranking mage is barely able to do any magic at all without having a powerful Almanac at hand. 

Amiya calling down lightning upon the Dead and the witch, oh, it’s a thing all on its own.

They're doing an admirable job of mounting an attack on apocalyptic powers, and Takashi needs to do his part. He unclasps Belgaer, but doesn’t let her ring even though she strains against his hold. His only weapons are the bells, and in the absence of any other options, Takashi has pinned all his hopes on Kokugyoku not being Alive or Dead, but just on it _remembering_ what it felt, to be whole.

And maybe to yearn to be whole, once again. Belgaer’s call is like the hum of acknowledgement a friend gives in a conversation, the gentle _ah!_ of a memory slotting into place, and she’s a lot more determined to sound out than many of the other bells. 

This is the hope, the tiniest seed of possibility. Get Belgaer to call back Kokugyoku’s memory of being in the tender care of the Chrysanthemum throne, to remember the role of the key Lionstone to hold the line between the living and the dead, and to maybe kickstart its regeneration.

This is it, and there’s nothing left for it. Takashi takes a moment to whisper his goodbyes, even if the two people who are here can’t hear him, and the ones who aren’t never will. Goodbye to his grandmother and his grandfather, to his friends at the Garrison and the other protector families, to the lapping waves of the lake, to Black who must still be out there, fighting, and to Keith, who’s climbed the rungs of Takashi’s affection at a breakneck speed.

A little more time together with them, with any of them, would have been nice. 

When Takashi pulls away from his grim thoughts and back to the matter at hand, he finds that Keith and Zarkon have migrated across most of the courtyard now, closer to where his grandmother and Haga are screaming and throwing spells at each other. Takashi takes this opportunity to sprint as best he can closer to the Lionstone, slipping and sliding on the mushy snow and giving the summoned Dead a wide berth.

Zarkon and Haga being distracted is a secondary blessing; none of the bodies can think enough to turn and attack him as Takashi inches closer and closer. The convergence of the witch and the necromancer abruptly makes sense when Takashi sees Haga’s figure drop to her knees after a bolt of lightning catches her square in the chest. 

(Takashi has never been prouder of his grandmother, and that is _really_ saying something.)

Zarkon makes a sound at that, some hideous inhuman screech, and in his distraction Keith gets in a handsome swipe at the necromancer’s belly. Black blood oozes out, and in a split second Zarkon has flung Keith bodily away, into the throngs of the Dead who hold on to him with greedy hands.

Takashi vaults over fallen stone and burning wood, going as fast as he can towards the epicentre of all of this, towards the broken stone. He can only trust that Keith can take care of this, that Zarkon and Haga together won’t overwhelm Amiya instantaneously, that this will work out. 

His foot catches on a loose stone and Takashi trips. He can’t catch himself with his sense of balance so malformed, and he lands badly on his stump, right at the base of Kokugyoku.

He screams, because he can’t help it, and then bites his tongue till it bleeds because he _cannot_ waste the cover Keith and Amiya have won for him. Struggling through the pain Takashi pulls out Belgaer, and free from her bondage her call asks for you to remember, remember.

Takashi crawls forwards and in a fit of desperation he presses his forehead to the unnaturally cool surface of the stone, and prays to anyone who might be listening for Kokugyoku to

_Remember, remember_ , _please remember_.

-

Stupid, stupid. Keith shouldn’t have let himself be distracted when he spotted Takashi running off in the corner of his eye. Things had been going according to plan, for the most part. Zarkon clearly depended on his necromancy and his Dead servants to do his bidding for him, and he’s too distracted to put enough pressure to make Samhir falter. Moving away from the stone had been a stroke of spectacular luck, brung about by Amiya punching well above her weight.

And then he had let pride go to his head when he got a lucky swipe in, the satisfaction of Takashi, Amiya, and himself doing what they’d planned to do.

Now he’s struggling to break free from a small legion of the Dead, and he’s getting increasingly frantic because now Zarkon and Haga are both advancing on Amiya, who despite her steady hands is looking a lot paler than before she called a storm down upon them. “Get off,” he snarls at the mouldy corpse that’s got a hold of his sword hand, “let go!”

He can see it before it happens; he’s going to be too late to save Amiya, he’s going to be the reason they fail, he’s going to let the palace be sieged again, but this time he only has himself to blame.

Keith struggles so hard that hands are starting to rip out from the animated corpses, and legs and bodies are being smashed to the ground. He pulls himself out of the molasses of the Dead, bloody and streaked with black tarry gunk, before he hears the ringing of the bell.

All around him, the Dead shudder and rattle, and as one they seem to gain some semblance of their former humanity, letting him go to stare down at themselves. Keith doesn’t let himself get distracted again, pushing through them to get to Amiya who’s gone paler than a ghost, deflecting blows with her spell-silks even as wounds start to bleed out sluggishly from where wicked talons and daggers found their mark.

Haga screams at the sound of the bell, and as she turns to face the Lionstone that has begun to pulse and effervesce black light from where it was ripped in two, Amiya catches Keith’s eye and grins wildly.

“Look after my boy, won’t you?” she calls out as she unwound a length of silk from her fist, taking advantage of the miracle of the Lionstone reawakening to loop it around Haga’s neck and pulling it tight, a collar that kept the witch’s power at her throat.

Zarkon and Keith are similarly rendered immobile in shock, and Haga comes to her senses first. “Go kill the Shirogane,” she hisses at Zarkon, struggling against Amiya’s hold. Her nails are far too sharp for a normal human, and they dig into Amiya’s bare hands but they don’t shake her hold at all.

“Go, Keith,” Amiya tells him, smiling as she calls on every inch of power she has left to bring down a bolt of lightning so thunderous and massive that when it hits them the grounds are lit up like the sun come close.

Keith turns before he can see the aftermath, turns and races after Zarkon’s back, and thinks that his mother would have really, really liked Amiya. 

The Dead fall away from Zarkon’s path, a black sea parting, and Keith screams at his legs to move faster, eat up more ground, because Zarkon is moving far quicker than any human could, and Takashi is lying still on the ground with his back to them, and he cannot get to Takashi before Zarkon does.

He runs and runs and runs, faster than he’s ever run before and faster than he ever will, and when the gap doesn’t decrease between him and Zarkon, he just screams.

“Takashi, run! Get up and run, Takashi, please!” 

The desperation tears at his throat, and Keith can’t do more than keep his legs moving as he screams and screams and screams. 

-

_Remember, Takashi. Remember_.

That’s right, Takashi thinks somewhat distantly. That’s why Kokugyoku felt familiar, outside of the mundane memories of his previous visits. The way the Lionstone took in the slightest bit of light and broke it into a thousand shades of black, it reminds him a lot of Black’s fur when she's feeling tetchy and particularly unknowable. 

It’s a strange not-quite-memory, and he almost feels like he can hear her roar in his head, before Keith’s voice cuts through his daze. Scrambling from his awkward press to the stone, he pulls himself to his feet, Belgaer still singing in his hand. 

Zarkon moves through space like there’s less of it for him than anyone else, and in much less time than is reasonable he’s suddenly right _there_ , looming and hideous and blocking out the sun from Takashi’s eyes.

The long neck bends, and they’re suddenly eye to eye, and Takashi gets a faceful of the madness manifest in the eyes of a necromancer who has rotted so thoroughly that nothing from Life inhabits the body anymore. 

It turns Takashi’s stomach, and he struggles to keep the bile back when Zarkon comes closer, breathing corrupted magic over his face.

“You are no Shirogane,” Zarkon says, little inflection in his beastly voice. He almost sounds bored, despite the apocalyptic scene they are both standing in the middle of. “You may have the bells, but their power is weak in your fledging hands.” The necromancer looks down at Belgaer hanging loosely from Takashi’s hand, and laughs like the barking of jackals. “You cannot stop me. The lion of Kokugyoku will finally be returned to me. Do you hear her coming, child? You have given me more power than anything I could have gotten from the empty husk of the stone.”

Zarkon laughs as he picks Takashi up and holds him aloft by the neck, back pressed to her stone. “And to present the Prince of the Chrysanthemum throne to me, too.” A talon swipes lightly across Takashi’s neck, and blood beads on the cut. “When I form a bond with the lion, I can complete the corruption with his blood splitting this stone, and all the rest of the Lionstones. When I bring Haga back, our plan will be complete.” Another heckling, barking laugh. “Thank you, false Shirogane, for bringing about the end of the world.”

Air isn’t coming into his lungs, and Takashi can’t think straight. What prince? What lion? He wanted Kokugyoku to remember being whole, and the stone remembered. He doesn’t know what Zarkon is talking about, and it’s getting harder and harder to focus with the black spots dancing in his vision, but all Takashi knows, all he feels in his blood and marrow and bones, is that he is to make Zarkon’s life as difficult as he knows how. 

A flash of red grows larger and larger behind Zarkon, and Takashi smiles. That’s one thing, at least. He discreetly tightens his hold on the heavy wood of Belgaer’s handle, and hopes that the next keeper of the bells realises that they have an alternative use in battle.

He raises the bell, and-

-

A lot of things happen at once, and it’s only momentum that keeps Keith going, the drive to reach Takashi keeping him moving.

Things go horrendously wrong all at once, but so slowly; every action wanders into completion, stuck in soft amber. In a move that’s become curiously familiar, Takashi raises his hand and smashes the bell into the side of Zarkon’s head, a final full offensive.

Instead of dropping Takashi and stepping a safe distance away, though, Zarkon instead hisses his affront, and stabs a talon right through the embroidered moon decorating Takashi’s chest, right through the chain mail and skin and bone, right into the heart.

Keith doesn’t know if he will ever stop screaming as he comes to the base of the Lionstone far too late to help, far too late to make a difference.

Takashi, crumpled and pale and bloody on the ground, makes Keith see red. He doesn’t know if Zarkon expected him when the necromancer turns and just barely manages to hold his arm up before Keith could slice through his face, cut him open and gut him in this place made putrid by all his dirty deeds. Keith doesn’t feel the impact of Samhir hitting against inhuman bone, moves on automatic to take a step back and lunge back in with a thrust.

He can honestly say he wasn’t expecting it, when out of the dark mass of the Kokugyoku struggling to recover, a glittering jet-black lion leaps out, larger than a horse with teeth as long as his hand. Keith doesn’t spare a moment to care, because he’s run out of those, just keeps attacking Zarkon because the only thing that matters is to put this monster down, down for good.

The roaring black lioness doesn’t attack Keith, which is all Keith needed at the moment to trust her. The sooner he can be rid of distractions, the sooner he can come to Takashi’s aid. He’s gaining on Zarkon, a slash here, a slice there, and Keith is ready to do this for as long as it takes for Samhir to burn Zarkon clean.

The lion seems to have a different idea, advancing on Zarkon and ignoring the spells and commands that he flings at her like they’re nothing more substantial than a lazy plea. As she moves, she grows and grows, and glows and glows. Zarkon forces more dirty magic into his demands, his yell for her to “Listen and obey!” echoing away from them for miles. Unmoved, her massive head turns this way and that, surveying the battlefield and the gory aftermath, before she stills, looking at the Lionstone. Her hackles rise when she spots Takashi’s bloodied body, and a rolling growl rockets out of her. 

That seems to make up her mind, and Keith doesn’t even feel apologetic when he accidentally stabs Samhir into her unsubstantial paw when the lion pushes him back. He doesn’t have the time or the capacity to react, when her head comes down, and she just….

Oh. She leans down, and she swallows Zarkon down in one absent mouthful. No blood and gore, no screaming, just…. One moment, Zarkon is there and in possession of more power than anybody could ever have the right to, and the next, there’s nothing left of him, no trace of corruption or necromancy or cruelty.

Keith blinks, taking up valuable time to understand what has happened. Haga’s gone, Zarkon’s gone, Amiya’s gone, Takashi’s-

_Takashi_.

He doesn’t have time to spend on astral magical beings that don’t yet mean him harm! Keith sheathes Samhir and then he’s running towards the unmoving heap at the base of Kokugyoku. Takashi, Takashi, Takashi, please, oh.

He skids to his knees at the boy’s side, gently rolling Takashi onto his back, looking down at the serene face of the last Shirogane as he finally got to rest.

Keith had thought he had known despair before, when he had been awoken and found out that his father and mother had been sacrificed to destroy Kokugyoku, that the palace had fallen a hundred years ago with all his friends and family and comrades. He had thought that his grief could not be greater.

Looking down at Takashi’s face, Keith discovers that he was very, very wrong.

-

It’s a new experience, and it’s not even particularly unpleasant. For the first time in his life (?), Takashi finds himself on his back, floating in the river of Death, and he’s immaterial. It’s the clearest sign he can expect of his own death; no body this time, and the perpetual chill and the weak grey light become less of an issue when he can’t really perceive them.

All there is, is a pervading sense of calm and peace. Takashi hopes this feeling means that he left the world in a better state than it was the past couple of days. Keith, poor Keith, is stuck by himself, but if Takashi’s last garbled memories of Black leaping out from the stone hadn’t been a hallucination, he trusts she’ll take care of him. 

Keith would make a good Shirogane; passionate, powerful, capable, kind. Takashi just hopes that he’ll have a better time of it than Takashi did.

The current feels gentle and soothing when he isn’t struggling to keep his footing. The river carries him through the first gate, down the rushing waterfall that used to terrify him when he had to climb down it. The current gets stronger as they get to the second gate, and the water swirls into a lazy whirlpool, endlessly wide, slow but inexorable. Takashi blinks as he goes under, and when he comes back to himself, the river laps against the side of him. Third gate, then. If he were corporeal, he would be running at full-tilt to avoid the giant wave that comes to sweep souls onwards.

Instead, he feels himself being raised to the crest of the wave, and is pushed into the misty yonder towards the fourth gate. It’s a series of waterfalls that fall into one another, with endless pools and deceptively strong flows that is a nightmare to navigate when you can’t perfectly remember which footholds and handholds are safe, and your grandmother is chiding you from below.

Takashi goes over the edge, and falls and falls and falls until he hits the deep waters that precede the fifth gate. This is the furthest he’s ever been, in Death. His grandmother judged that it was too dangerous to hope that his body can withstand the current here, when his feet can’t touch the bottom and the river flows quicker than anything in life. Getting through the gate is another nightmare, keeping your wits about you as the current pushes water uphill. What happens where the river meets the sky is something Takashi has never gotten to see before.

There’s a first time for everything. He feels a little curious, to see this unseen thing, but this far into Death and mostly all Takashi can think about is how desperately lonely he is. 

He’s never gone through a gate without his father or his grandmother or Black. He has never had to see all that he’s seeing now by himself, and it reminds him of all that he’s lost before and all that’s left on the other side.

Amazing. What a time to find out that spirits can get teary-eyed and the sniffles, that he has to hold back a sob after an inglorious death in an effort to stop an apocalypse. It was worth it, of course, Takashi knows that.

He just wishes that the cost of things had been something he was better able to afford.

“What _did_ I tell you about wiping your nose on your tunic, Takkun?”

Despite the overwhelming current and the volume of water, Takashi startles so hard he breaks the surface.

Sitting on a small makeshift island that sparks and hisses with lightning, he comes upon Shirogane Amiya, who smiles as she bodily (?) hauls him out.

“Baba?” Takashi doesn’t think he should believe this. Surely this is some Free Magic Creature that has taken her form and intends to feast on him. Surely he should be fighting and struggling to get away from her. 

But surely, no Free Magic Creature regardless of its power would know to call him Takkun.

She smiles, electric and sharp. “I was hanging around just in case I needed to catch you. You know, any plan that ends in you dying is _not_ a good plan.” Shirogane Amiya, one of the most astoundingly powerful Free Magic users in her generation, reaches over and pinches his ear. “You have become terribly rebellious since you went to the Garrison, you know.”

That settles it; it’s her, it’s her, it’s actually, genuinely her. Takashi can’t help but break into a massive, watery smile. “If you’re in this good of a mood, baba, I must have done _something_ right.” He gives in to the temptation to reach over and hug her as tightly as he can, even if they’re both a little soft and wispy. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

She pulls away, but keeps a hold of his hand. It’s a tight grip, reminiscent of that first time she took him into Death with her. “Well. The human side of me is dead, technically.”

It’s about what Takashi had expected, but he’s confused by her choice of words. “What…. What other side of you is there?” he asks, hesitantly.

Amiya sighs. “It’s a long story, and there are so many of those I never got the chance to tell you.” She tilts her head to the side all of a sudden, like she’s trying to hear something over the splashing of the water. Whatever it is, it makes her smile. “We have time to go over things quickly, I think.”

Takashi would think that they had all the time in the world, considering the fact that they were both dead, but he doesn’t try to correct her. “Start with being technically dead, baba,” he urges.

She just laughs, more indulgent than she usually is. “Well. Seeing as how Black is running free, I’m guessing you know that she’s actually the most powerful Free Magic Creature any of us have ever seen?”

Takashi nods, because that one’s clear as anything. He had taken off her bell, and in her place a god had stood.

“Good. What you may not know is that Black is the incarnation of all the magic that is in Kokugyoku, the power that holds the line between Life and Death. I thought it was tempting fate that you decided to call the being from the Black Lionstone ‘Black’, but your parents thought it was sweet and Black didn’t mind, either. So, ah, Shirogane Kume became the Shirogane after her father died during the final battle on the night the Chrysanthemum throne was destroyed, and she took it into her head that if we couldn’t heal the Lionstone itself, we should at least check on the Lion.” Amiya glances over at him, a little concerned. “All right so far?”

Takashi wants to blush heavily. He remembers the day he named Black was the day 5-year-old Takashi had learned his first fistful of Chinese characters, and she had graduated from ‘Cat’ (a kanji he couldn’t write) to ‘Black’ (a kanji that he could). There’s not a lot of thought that goes into the naming conventions of children, and to find out that he had somehow hit the nail on the head…. 

It’s embarrassing. He nods, feeling a little squirmy.

Amiya takes pity on him and continues with her story. “She found Black rampaging past the sixth gate, wild and so powerful that she was disrupting the balance of Life and Death. The story goes that Kume promised to help re-balance the upset caused by the breaking of the Black Lionstone, if Black was willing to trust her.” Amiya idly kicks her feet in the water, as their little island drifts. “Kume figured out a way to let Black roam both worlds using a bell, and in return Black shared some of her power. They managed to beat back Zarkon and the witch, but it’s been a hundred years since then. Power rises and wanes in cycles, and his resurrection shouldn’t have taken me by surprise.” She sighs, hand clenched in a tight fist, frustration clear in his voice. “But it did, and now here we are.” 

Here we are indeed.

“Black bestowed Kume with a gift for Free Magic, but the thing is, ‘some’ of Black’s power is still more power than any human could possibly handle, and the overflow spilled into all the women in the Shirogane bloodline. We all have a little or a lot of Free Magic in us, as a reward to Kume.” Amiya calls on a ball lightning, and it floats lazily around their heads. “I have a lot. The reason why I can’t enter Death after using too much magic isn’t because I become weak, Takkun. It’s because I can’t keep a human shape if I do.”

Floating on a magic island on the cusp of the fifth gate is not where Takashi had ever expected to find out the extremely eclectic history of his family, but a lot of the little odds and ends of their lives make more sense now. He thinks of the woman that had rained down electricity and tried to punch Haga in the jaw, and the concept of something in Shirogane women being a little wild and feral and free is suddenly extremely easy to accept. The only thing he needs to know is, “Does jiji know about this?”

She laughs, soft and reverent. “Of course. He knew he was in for a difficult time the moment he decided he was interested in a Shirogane, and he said that his mind wasn’t going to change just because I could blow out all the windows at home if I got a little upset.” The casual acceptance of her not-quite-humanity had cemented the fact that the man was for keeps, and Amiya’s been rewarded for that decision for decades. “Don’t forget to pick him up and let him know that I’ll try and get back in a while. Knowing Ryuuichi, he’s probably trying to engage the Dead in mortal combat somewhere in Hyogo.”

Takashi had been pointedly avoiding asking about his grandfather up till this point, but hearing that he was alive and out there raising polite hell is such a relief that Takashi could almost breathe. “I’m glad, baba.” He leans over, and kisses her on her cheek. “I’m sorry that you have to find and train a new Shirogane, but thank you for telling me more about our family.” He looks at the wall of water ahead of them, and stifles a sigh. “And thank you for keeping me company. I was just thinking that dying’s a really lonely thing to do when you do it for real, but I’m glad that you’re with me for part of the way.” He squeezes her hand. “I love you, baba.”

Even Free Magic Creatures needed to be careful with the later gates; get past the ninth and there isn’t a power strong enough to pull you back. Takashi is going to be grateful for what he gets, because he’s already gotten so much. “Can you please look after Keith, though? He did get stuck in our era because of me, you need to ask him about it. Tell jiji that I love him and that I hope he remembered to take his gout medication on his rampage, and tell Keith….. Tell Keith that I’m sorry, and just…. Thank you for being kind to me.”

There’s a lot more that Takashi would like to tell Keith, but he has no idea how long it would take for his grandmother to cobble herself enough of a form to venture into Life, and as long as Keith isn’t left by himself, then that’s all that Takashi could possibly ask for.

Amiya stares at him with a quizzical look, before realisation seems to dawn on her. “Takkun, are you telling me to tell Keith these things because you’re going to die?”

It seems unusually cruel to make him say it, but Takashi supposes that acceptance is an important step in the grieving process, even if he’s just grieving for himself. “I’m technically already dead, baba,” he chides her. “So I need you to pass a message along to him.”

Instead of nodding solemnly or agreeing with him, Amiya once again tilts her head to the side in distraction, and something catches enough of her attention that she looks back to the fourth gate for a moment. “Takkun,” she says, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind his ear, “tell him yourself.”

In the distance, there is a roar, and for a second, the whole of Death glows a bright, gleaming gold.

-

What is the _point_ of being the Crown Prince of the Chrysanthemum throne, the keeper of the magics of Life and the protector of the Kokugyoku, if every time Keith tries to be of service, someone dies? He almost wants to pick up Samhir and smash her against the Lionstone for being the singular site of so many of his losses, but Takashi is a cooling weight on his lap and Keith just feels unbearably numb. 

There are still dozens of dazed Dead scrambling around the palace grounds, and he… needs to check on what became of Amiya and the witch. He needs to ensure that the Lionstone heals properly, and he needs to make a claim for the throne, because Keith certainly isn’t ready to let this happen again. 

He should take the bandolier off of Takashi for safe-keeping, in case regular humans start coming in to check on the explosions and the fires and the screaming, but he can’t make his fingers move. He can barely make himself breathe.

It’s all quiet and still, until he feels a hulking presence behind him, and he’s cast in the shadow of a mountainous lion cut from a starless night’s sky. Keith tilts his head back to look up at her, and struggles to think. Being eaten by an endless void isn’t the worst way to end everything, but then what happens to Takashi and Amiya? Will anyone know what they sacrificed to fend off a Great Evil that nearly destroyed the country for a second time?

“What do you want?” he asks her at long last, too exhausted to do more than just that.

_Young prince_ , she says in complete silence. Her voice booms inside him, makes him feel like there’s cotton in his ears and an echo chamber in his head, and Keith flinches hard. _I am glad to see you return_.

He wonders if all those lazy afternoons spent being enchanted by Kokugyoku meant that she had all the time in the world to look back at him too. It’s not a comforting thought. Nothing really is, right now.

“Good for you,” Keith tells her, half-heartedly trying to be polite but sounding more listless than anything else. “I’ll help you set the stone and everything else in order soon, Kokugyoku, just…. Give me a moment.”

A whoosh of displaced air, and suddenly she’s the size of an actual lion instead of a monster, and she comes up right to his face to press their cheeks together. Her fur is prickly on his skin, and it brings tears to his eyes. He presses into the scruff of her neck, holds Takashi more tightly in his arms, and tries to breathe his way back into being a functioning man. Just a moment, he needs a moment.

_You have done well_ , she says, grooming him with a rough dark tongue. _Your family did their best to protect me a century ago, young prince, and you have done so twice over._ She curls up around him, sinuous and powerful, an immovable presence shielding him and Takashi from the rest of the world. _I am sorry for all that you have suffered._

“Me too.” He presses his forehead to the jut of her shoulder, and squeezes his eyes tight. “Is there…. Is there anyone else in the Shirogane family? I need to let them know what happened here, that Takashi and his grandmother passed as heroes.” Keith can’t decide which would be worse; if there was a parent out there, or a sibling, and he needs to look at a face that shares a resemblance to Takashi’s and say _forgive me, I did not protect him_ , or if there was no one out there and this is how the line ends for the Shirogane.

_His grandfather is with the family protecting the Rurigyoku, a long way away from here. I can bring him to you, my prince, but explain this human concept of yours. What do you mean, that they have passed?_ She chuffs, and it blows his bangs clear off his face. _Takashi is with Amiya, by the fifth gate. Do you not intend to pursue him?_

_That_ snaps Keith into action; he pulls away from Kokugyoku so quickly he strains his neck, and his hold around Takashi reflexively gets tighter. “How can I ‘pursue’ him? Where is the fifth gate? Why did you not tell me sooner!” He struggles to his feet, hauling Takashi and the lion up with him, and moves a hand to Samhir.

It could take a journey of a thousand nights to get to where Takashi is waiting; Keith would be honoured to take the first step right now, bloodied and bruised as he is. 

Instead of leaping up, up, and away, the lion pulls back to sit on her haunches, looking at him with mild bemusement before she chuffs again. _I forget how young you and he both are, and how your elders kept so many stories from you. Tell me, prince, do you know what power runs through the veins of the heir to the Chrysanthemum?_

Is solving a riddle a requirement to earning directions from her? Keith tries to not let his irritation show, even if he’s gritting his teeth and trying not to scream. At least this one he can answer. “Life, isn’t it? The Shirogane have power in Death, the royal family are the symbol for the power in Life, and the protectors of the Lionstones keep the line between both.” That at least had been brought up so frequently in his tutoring that he had remembered that, even if the concept of being a conduit of Life energy despite being quite non-magical never made sense to him.

The great lion nods at him. _The unwilling sacrifice of your family broke my stone, the willing blood of a Shirogane healed me. What would you give to bring the Shirogane back, and return balance to Life and Death, Keith of the Chrysanthemum throne?_

Is that even really a question? Keith could almost laugh; he’s never heard a better bargain. He drops to one knee, because what she offers is something worth bowing to, and looks her in her fathomless eyes.

“Absolutely everything,” he tells her, and she roars.

-

Keith had expected he would be back in Death sooner rather than later when he had been roused by Takashi, a warrior’s death in battle.

He had not expected to have his soul forced out of his body, only to be met by the lion on the other side, a glowing mass of solid shadows. He had not expected to be asked to sit astride her, and to have her roar thundering through the entirety of Death.

He had not expected that she would run through the gates that are nigh-on impenetrable for anything mortal, nor to feel the strong connection between his soul and his body like a gentle tug on his back. He can literally see the bond between him and Life, a thick cord of braided gold shining bright, and Keith is filled abruptly with the certainty that even if Kokugyoku were to disappear from beneath him right at this very moment, he would just make his way deeper and deeper into Death until he could grab Takashi by the waist and drag him back into life.

They run past waterfalls and whirlpools and deep ocean currents, the water of the river of Death sluicing off the giant paws of this ethereal lion, and in the near distance Keith sees sparks flickering, blinding in the complete gloom of Death, and he swears he can _feel_ Takashi there. He urges Kokugyoku on, and when she jumps over the final gate with an ear-splitting roar, he’s screaming too.

Light explodes from his tether to Life, and for a moment the waters before the fifth gate light up like day as Keith finally, finally finds Takashi.

Keith sees him, an immaterial silver grey that becomes more solid and real when bathed in the light Keith had brought with him, and unbearable relief sweeps in, makes him burn. He sees Takashi look at him with shock, sees him start to say “Keit-”, but Keith knows what he needs to do.

On shaky legs he leaps off of the lion and tackles Takashi right around the middle, slamming them both into the water. He pulls off almost immediately, because there’ll be time enough to show his joy at seeing Takashi again, and for now, he needs to give what is asked of him, the barter for a Shirogane’s soul, a promise made true.

He takes Takashi’s hand, and holds it to his chest. Keeps his head down, because he needs to focus and do it right; the universe is watching and listening, and Keith wants them to get an earful.

“I, Kogane Keith, the rightful king of the Chrysanthemum Throne, protector of the Lionstones, keeper of the magics of Life, promise on my honour and my duty and my life that I will be faithful to the Shirogane. I will never cause him harm, and I swear my strength and my powers all to him and no other." Keith looks up at Takashi's bewildered face, and his grin is all teeth.

"The King has spoken."

The wild magics of life listen, and judge.

They accept, and respond.

Red-gold light blazes in Death, and it engulfs them both. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is like 3 months late, the quarantine has done a number on my desire to do anything in my life, and then when I got back into the mood to write, trying to figure out how to resolve the plot in a way that didn't make me sad was an absolute nightmare. I'm proud of this story because this is by far the plottiest thing I've ever written, and it's the first time I tried to build in foreshadowing and hints into a story. I hope you enjoyed it, Victoria, and the next chapter is a fluffy epilogue which is why I'm exclaiming all my feelings here ;)
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed it, and 100% tell me if you saw Keith and Black's true roles coming in from miles away! I swear I was so smug when I came up with it.
> 
> Take care and stay safe wherever you are! Catch my mania on [tumblr](https://cetaceans-pls.tumblr.com/post/161779740389/commission-info-and-masterlist) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/andthensomelion)!

**Author's Note:**

> Happy belated New Year and even later Christmas, Victoria! I had a heck of an accident close to Christmas and it completely derailed my schedule /)A(\ I'm really sorry, and I'm even sorrier that Keith is absent, but he is, as always, coming full speed for Shiro. Next chapter comes out once I'm back home in a couple of days, it's a doozy! 
> 
> Main inspirations for this Fantasy AU are 2 extremely good books: Sabriel, by Garth Nix, and The Lives of Christopher Chant, by Diana Wynne Jones. Extreme reccs for these rather old books c: 
> 
> Hope you had a happy holiday season!


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